In the classic good cop-bad cop scenario, two officers working together take different paths to reach the same goal: to get the suspect to confess.
Americans witnessed a version of that scenario last week, although with crucial distinctions.
Major law-enforcement events showcased the real-world difference between actual good cops and actual bad cops.
The good cops made an arrest in the cold-case murders of three young women on Long Island.
Solving cases more than a decade old doesn’t happen without an exhaustive combination of old-fashioned shoe-leather effort and the modern marvel of DNA technology.
Both played huge roles in the arrest of Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old married architect and father of two who lived not far from where his alleged victims were dumped.
He also could be charged with killing a fourth woman whose remains were found near those of the other three.
Among the many reasons the trail went cold was that Heuermann was not an obvious suspect.
A former neighbor saw a man “living a double life,” telling NBC News: “You know, the regular guy who goes to work, has kids in the local school and in a good neighborhood, but he’s killing people on the side.”
The breakthroughs started soon after January 2022, when a new Suffolk County police commissioner formed a special team of investigators to focus on finding a serial killer.
Cops got a break when they learned Heuermann owned a Chevrolet Avalanche, described by witnesses as the vehicle driven by the killer of one of the four women, all of whom worked as prostitutes.
The break resulted in more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, with probers going through his burner phone records, Internet searches and trash cans.
They also followed the suspect.
As The Post put it, investigators “struck gold on Jan. 26, 2023, when surveillance teams pulled Heuermann’s leftover pizza crust from a garbage can along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.”
DNA on the pizza linked Heuermann to a man’s hair found on a piece of burlap wrapped around one of the victims, prosecutors say.
This is dogged and brilliant police work, the stuff of legend and why people in small towns and big cities alike trust their local cops and want more of them.
Unfortunately, another side of law enforcement was also on display last week.
This one involved FBI Director Christopher Wray, whose tenure increasingly resembles that of his predecessor, James Comey, whose sneering self-righteousness made him the very definition of a bad cop.
Besmirching the Bureau
Wray, appearing before the House Judiciary Committee, gave every indication he’s on a mission to cause as many Americans as possible to distrust his once-storied agency.
Sad to say, he’s succeeding wildly.
He was bored and occasionally annoyed as he fielded questions, unconcerned that many Americans believe something is fundamentally wrong with the FBI.
GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas got to the point by asking Wray about a poll showing just 37% of the public has a favorable view of his agency.
Hunt cited as recent reasons the fast-tracking of the Donald Trump document case and the slow-walking of the cases against Hunter Biden and the president, who also kept classified documents in unsecure locations.
As usual, Wray’s response was maddeningly nonresponsive.
“I worry less about polls,” he said, before detouring into a spiel about the “number of people from Texas who apply to work for us.”
His prep for testimony apparently emphasizes saying as little as possible and running out the clock of five minutes for each questioner.
The mystery is whether he realizes his approach comes across as arrogantly insincere at a time when public trust in the federal government is rapidly declining.
Or if he even cares what the public thinks.
As Hunt demonstrated, Republicans are mostly united around the belief there is a two-tiered justice system, and they have ample proof.
Yet Wray acts as if this is impossible because he’s a registered Republican.
But his party affiliation clearly doesn’t matter to lawmakers from either side.
Even a newcomer could understand by the questions which party saw Wray as a political asset and which saw him as a national problem.
Dems side with censors
After several Republicans criticized the FBI’s role in working with Big Tech to censor Americans’ First Amendment right of free speech on politics and the coronavirus, one Dem, Rep. Glenn Ivey from Maryland, shot back that they were hammering the FBI because Republicans “want Russian interference in the 2024 election.”
It was the lowest blow of the day, and irrefutable evidence that Democrats have become the party of censorship and politicized law enforcement.
They see the FBI as the armed wing of their movement, and they’re not wrong.
Although both Trump and Joe Biden kept classified documents they shouldn’t have, Trump was subjected to a search warrant raid, has been indicted and faces hundreds of years in prison.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department prober tasked with Biden’s case has not been seen or heard from since the day he was appointed.
Even more telling of law enforcement misconduct is that IRS whistleblowers blew the lid off the Justice Department’s obstruction of their efforts to fully investigate Hunter and any role his father had in their foreign business deals.
Their testimony underscores what many of us believed all along: the fix was in since the day Biden took office, with Attorney General Merrick Garland making sure his boss’s son got all the family-and-friends discounts.
To Wray, all these complaints are like so much water sliding off a duck’s back.
He was nonchalant in his denials that the bureau is being weaponized against conservatives.
“The FBI does not and has no interest in protecting anyone politically,” he said when a Republican asked if he was “protecting” the Bidens.
Given the known facts, his claim proves he’s part of the problem, not the solution.
Last week also provided another example of federal law enforcement running off the rails.
The Secret Service closed its investigation of the cocaine stash found in the White House without identifying a single suspect.
Later, the agency admitted it hadn’t even conducted any interviews, with the explanation that up to 500 people would have to be questioned, so nobody was.
A spokesman said conducting that many interviews would be too time consuming and probably wouldn’t help find the culprit anyway because there was no visual or DNA evidence linking any individual to the drugs.
Apart from the Post and a few other outlets, most news organizations treated the shut down as a ho-hum nothing-burger.
The lack of public outrage shows another disturbing impact of bad cops.
People get so accustomed to poor performance by federal law-enforcement agencies that they accept it as normal.
It’s not normal and it won’t fix itself.
Chris Wray proves that every time he opens his mouth.
