Problem is, they "caugh the sniper" before he was "the sniper", and since there was nothing to charge him with at the time, there's nothing that could really be done, other than maybe "keep an eye on him". The problem with that, of course, is that "keeping an eye on him" because Somebody Thought He Was Suspicious is almost always a waste of police time - remember that the cases where someone is reported as "maybe a terrorist" but never turns out to be one don't make the news (in fact, the news never hears about them, generally), and the "sleeper cells for freedom" are themselves potential dangers (really - the potential for abuse is tremendous. Just think about the certainty of some (probably very few) people using that to get people they don't like "watched", or tarnish their reputation. Separating noise from signal becomes very, very difficult.). (Of course, there are potential civil liberties issues involved with watching people long-term because of random suspicions, but that's not my point, especially since the very real dangers of war and terrorism act to mitigate those concerns.) Not to say there's no merit in citizen involvement, but that there are significant downsides to an "informal" network of people-watchers. Posted by: Sigivald, on October 29, 2002 07:43 PM

Yea, if you want to see what happens when the government tries to encourage widespread civilian vigilantism, just imagine if we enacted something like the TIPS program...oh, wait, we did. Posted by: Lane, http://www.lanemcfadden.net on October 30, 2002 12:46 PM