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From: Jasper
Date: 6/30/01
Time: 5:22:26 PM
Charlie and Allita,
I have an entirely different take on the blanket and the sloppy work of Lange and Vannatter in general.
I've done a few radio interviews lately where the host wanted to talk about dirty cops. I found myself coming back again and again to the same two themes:
1) Functional Fixedness - the tendency to solve familiar problems in a familiar way. 2) Dirty cops can't exist without good cops who ignore them.
Everything I've learned about Lange and Vannatter tells me that they believed the hype about the Robbery/Homicide Division being the elite investigative unit that it was supposed to be. These guys investigated something like six hundred homicides between them (or were there ONLY 400). I think that they were so used to dealing with all categories of difficulty in solving murders that they simply categorized the crime as an "easy" one right away based on the OBVIOUS evidence of O.J.'s guilt. They behaved as though the crime was solved BEFORE they investigated anything and cut corners to make their case against the guy they were sure must have done it. That is what their book is about, the investigation of O.J. Simpson, not the investigation of the murders he was accused of committing. That is a fundamental error in problem-solving that professional are especially vulnerable too.
You get this sort of thing all the time with professionals in other lines of work. In design, I can't count the times I've seen very good designers, engineers and modelers make very dumb mistakes because a problem looked so simple that they went straight to the nearest familiar answer without even looking at the "little things" that made it the wrong answer. They cut corners and screwed up big time. I saw the same thing in the Army with experienced jumpers who misjudged the wind and came in for a standing landing (our parachutes weren't designed for standing landings) when they should have done a PLF (parachute landing fall). One old-timer I knew broke his neck pulling a stunt like that after over 500 jumps (I had 17). He cut corners. I'm sure that you've seen the same thing with professionals you know.
There was only one other logical explanation for the evidence that Vannatter and Lange saw against O.J. (the wife-beater, they were told) and that is a frame-up by fellow officer. Frame-ups are what the really good cops make jokes about because they have been falsely accuse of it and they hear guilty people hollering frame-up so often when the evidence against them cannot be explained away. It's something that most professional cops don't event think about unless they are forced to before they make up their minds.
And that, I think, is the answer to the question of the blanket and who knows how many other stupid mistakes in judgment. What kind of cop would do a thing like that? One who has already made up his mind. --Jasper