By Michelle
Malkin
© 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
As a resident of Montgomery County, Md., home of celebrity police chief
Charles A. Moose, I would like the rest of the nation to know what a
growing number of Moose's own employees and constituents think about him:
- He is an outlaw opportunist.
- He is an ineffective, absent leader.
- He is a money-grubbing menace who has put his personal ambition over
public safety.
Moose, who was ubiquitous during last fall's Beltway sniper
investigation, is nowhere to be seen in our neighborhoods these days. He
has supposedly been on active duty for the Air National Guard, "helping
his air guard unit develop an anti-terrorism force protection plan,"
according to the Washington Post.
When he's not avoiding phone calls about whether he ever plans to
return to his old job, he's traveling across the country giving supposedly
expert speeches about leadership and crisis management. Meanwhile, morale
among his rank-and-file officers has plunged. One veteran Montgomery
County cop told me this week: "The chief is snubbing his nose at us. All
he cares about is money. What kind of leader is that?"
A quick visit to Amazon.com reveals what Moose has really been up to
while out of the office. Instead of fighting crime and protecting his
local community, as his $160,000 government salary requires him to do,
Moose has been readying the fall launch of a book capitalizing on his
fame. "Three Weeks in October: The Manhunt for the Serial Sniper,"
published by New York-based Dutton, features a huge cover photo of Moose
wearing his prominently placed, shiny police badge.
Moose and his publisher have put the book up for pre-order sales in
defiance of a local county ethics commission ruling earlier this spring
that barred him from writing the book. The panel concluded that
longstanding ethics regulations – regulations he agreed to abide by when
he was hired – prevented him from profiting from his job as police chief.
The ethics watchdogs also suggested he would reveal confidential
information to titillate readers.
The commission's concerns about Moose's upcoming book publicity circus
– which will coincide with sniper suspect John Muhammad's trial – were
shared by several top local law-enforcement officials who worked on the
sniper task force. Henrico County Police Chief Henry W. Stanley told the
Washington Post after a sniper task force meeting in February: "With all
that's happened, we certainly don't want anything to jeopardize the trial.
I felt, and I think the group felt, that we needed no more publicity that
could add to the trial issues."
The task force expressed unanimous disapproval of Moose's book
publishing plans. But he treated his fellow police chiefs the same way he
treated the county ethics panel: He ignored them completely.
Instead of following the law, he and his big-mouthed wife, an image
consultant and CEO of Chief Moose Inc., have hurled reckless charges of
racism at county employees. Mrs. Moose whined to the panel that the couple
resented having to answer to "a fully white group to give him permission
to make some money." She likened her spouse to Martin Luther King Jr. and
Nelson Mandela as a civil-rights trailblazer who "stood for principle."
The Mooses have sued Montgomery County over the ethics ruling, citing
their First Amendment rights. But their true motives are far less noble.
In closed hearings, as first reported by WorldNetDaily.com investigative
journalist Paul Sperry, Chief Moose grumbled that he made less than other
police chiefs around the country and mentioned the need to pay off his
wife's law school bills. Mrs. Moose pointed out that their house lacked
antiques because of all the humanitarian sacrifices Moose has made on
behalf of public safety. Moose, already the highest paid Montgomery County
official, stands to earn a book advance worth a reported $160,000 – and
much more if the planned TV movie gets off the ground.
This tacky pair should spare us their self-pity. As many local cops
have argued, Moose's ambition, incompetence and racial blinders may have
cost some of the sniper victims' lives. Now, that greed threatens to
jeopardize the integrity of the sniper trials.
"My commitment is to the county and to be a good police chief," Moose
insists. Hard to take seriously from a man who treats his badge as no more
than a handy book-cover prop.
Michelle Malkin's
column is syndicated by Creators Syndicate and appears in about 100
newspapers nationwide. Her book, "Invasion:
How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces
to Our Shores," is a national best seller and now available at
ShopNetDaily. All copies of the book sold at ShopNetDaily are personally
autographed.
