ReportWire

Tag: Government failure

  • FBI blunders and internet panic: How the search for Charlie Kirk’s killer went off the rails

    Authorities announced on Friday morning that they made progress in solving a mystery that has gripped the nation for two days: who murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk with a rifle during a crowded event at Utah Valley University.

    Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson had been turned in by his family after he “confessed to them or implied” his guilt in the assassination. A roommate also showed police Discord chat messages from Robinson about hiding a rifle, according to Cox, who said that Robinson acted alone.

    Without those tips, it’s hard to know how long the manhunt would have gone on for. The night before, authorities had signaled that they were completely stumped. Officials pleaded with the public for information based on a few grainy surveillance stills on Thursday night, and Utah Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason told NBC News that authorities had “no idea” where the shooter was.

    Progressive critics—as well as conservative consigliere Chris Rufo—have accused FBI Director Kash Patel of bungling the investigation. Patel had caused major confusion by implying on social media that the FBI had caught the shooter, only to announce that the “subject” had been released after interrogation. That man, who was completely innocent, suffered a flood of threats after his name and photo were publicized.

    Adding to the confusion, police were also filmed escorting a local elderly gadfly out of the event while the crowd blamed him for the shooting. And to make matters worse, internet sleuths misidentified him as yet another innocent person who was nowhere near Utah at the time.

    Of course, chaos and mistakes are an unavoidable part of crises. Thankfully, none of these mistakes led to anyone’s death, as they have in the past. It will take a while for the full story behind the Kirk investigation to come out, to understand which errors were understandable and which were inexcusable.

    At the very least, the manner of Robinson’s arrest throws cold water on the idea that mass spying and heavy-handed police powers are the solution to dramatic crimes. In his post lambasting Patel’s leadership, Rufo also called for “a campaign to disrupt domestic terror networks” and “to investigate, infiltrate, and disrupt the violent movements—of whatever ideology—that threaten the peace in the United States.”

    But it’s not clear that more aggressive political surveillance would have stopped or caught the suspected assassin. The photos that identified him came from old-fashioned security cameras in a hallway, which captured him walking up a stairway and then jumping off the roof after the assassination. Robinson’s father, a longtime sheriff’s deputy, reportedly recognized his son from the photos and told him to turn himself in.

    Meanwhile, the release of the surveillance photos had led to a flood of tips that wasted the authorities’ time. At the Thursday night press conference, Cox said that authorities were sifting through 7,000 tips from the public.

    “It is clear they do not know the name of the suspect, that they don’t have a cellphone track, they don’t have fingerprints, DNA, or digital footprint,” journalist John Solomon, who is close to Patel, told Fox News after the press conference. “And that’s why they’re putting so much personally identifying information up, to try to help get the public to find something that’s there.”

    And the assassination did not come out of an organized political network that could be infiltrated. Although there are signs pointing to a left-wing motive—Cox said that a family member told police that Robinson was angry about Kirk coming to Utah because of his political beliefs—Robinson seems to be, like many other shooting suspects, a lone wolf who spent too much time on the internet.

    An internal law enforcement bulletin, leaked to the press, initially reported that the shooter had written messages about “transgender and anti-fascist ideology” on bullet casings. Those turned out to be a mix of references to the video game Helldivers 2 (which features killing fascists) and lewd jokes. “If you read this you are gay LMAO,” one of the casings read. Another mocked the “furry” fetish subculture.

    An eccentric personality with no criminal record who plays lots of video games and dislikes conservatives is a pretty broad profile, one that covers potentially millions of people. Most of them are neither violent nor members of organized political “networks” that could be disrupted. If the past few days are any indication, encouraging mass online reporting of anyone suspicious can actually make the police’s job harder.

    Using Kirk’s murder to tighten government restrictions would not only be ineffective at preventing more incidents like it. It would also be an unfortunate rebuke to Kirk, who often preached freedom over control.

    Matthew Petti

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  • How Michigan lost $1 million of liquor

    How Michigan lost $1 million of liquor

    It’s been a rough couple of years for government-controlled liquor systems. In 2022, news broke of an inside job at the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority (ABC), in which a former state employee tipped off private collectors about which state-run liquor stores were expecting deliveries of rare and sought-after bourbons. Last year, Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission officials were busted for siphoning off hard-to-obtain bourbons for their personal use.

    Now, Michigan is writing the latest chapter in the government’s century-long saga of alcohol control embarrassments. According to a just-released audit of the Michigan Liquor Control Commission (MLCC), the state’s complete inability to properly track its spirits inventory resulted in nearly a million dollars of liquor disappearing without a trace.

    Michigan is one of 17 states that still operates as a control state. MLCC is the sole wholesaler of distilled spirits, meaning all liquor sold and distributed in the state must be originally purchased by the agency. Michigan law requires MLCC to exercise “complete control over alcoholic beverage traffic,” but it turns out that the agency lacks control over pretty much everything.

    Since the 1990s, MLCC has outsourced the actual storage and warehousing of liquor to three “authorized distribution agents” (ADAs), who in turn use 11 warehouses to house the booze. The ADAs, which essentially act as a government-sanctioned oligopoly, are supposed to be operating as agents of the state. But the state code is silent about what the actual responsibilities of the ADAs entail, which results in a situation where everyone and no one is in charge at the same time.

    Perhaps the most significant finding of the audit is that $961,000 of MLCC’s liquor inventory—totaling 62,294 bottles, housed in ADA warehouses—mysteriously vanished between January and February 2022. To put this in context, the missing liquor constituted 20 percent of the state’s entire inventory. While the state is supposed to conduct physical inventory counts at the ADA warehouses, zero inventory checks took place from October 2019 to July 2022 (which, naturally, MLCC blamed on COVID-19, despite the pandemic not starting in earnest until the spring of 2020 and Michigan lifting its lockdown orders by June 2021).

    “MLCC was unable to provide documentation regarding the whereabouts of the missing inventory,” the audit dryly remarks. Although one should never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence, it’s worth noting that the state’s inventory includes spirits ranging as high as $45,000 per bottle, which creates enormous opportunities for malfeasance given MLCC’s slipshod  tracking protocols.

    Were this Agatha Christie-meets-Ayn Rand mystery not enough, the audit goes on to spell out how MLCC is also wholly incapable of ordering rational amounts of each booze type it stocks. The report recounts the agency purchasing 12,204 bottles of a particular spirit in a week in which a mere 1,104 bottles of that spirit were sold. The agency then kept over 11,000 bottles of the spirit on hand for the next 48 weeks—the last 19 of which saw zero sales for it. MLCC also purchased 780 bottles of another spirit over the course of 77 weeks, with zero corresponding sales in any of the weeks those purchases were made.

    The MLCC’s problems extended beyond inventory ineptitude as well, with the agency also somehow issuing numerous liquor licenses to establishments located in dry jurisdictions, which it now will be forced to revoke. These establishments were selling alcohol in dry locales since 2018 without anyone noticing, until the auditor stepped in.

    In perhaps the understatement of the century—and in language only a government lawyer or accountant could appreciate—the audit rates MLCC’s overall performance as “not sufficient.” The agency’s preliminary response is that it “agrees” with all of the audit’s findings, as the report’s mountain of evidence is apparently too much even for a bureaucracy to ignore.

    Lost amid the report’s 65 pages of boozy bean-counting—and the scandal of a million dollars of liquor aspirating into thin air—lies a deeper question: Why, in 2024, is the Michigan government still trying to operate as the wholesaler for distilled spirits? It doesn’t do so for beer and wine, and it already goes so far as to outsource the actual warehousing and logistics to its distribution agents.

    Sadly, the most predictable answer is also likely the most accurate: MLCC has generated some $2 billion for the state’s general fund over the past decade. Perhaps a million dollars in missing liquor is a small price to pay after all.

    C. Jarrett Dieterle

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