What the Redacted Affidavit Didn't Say

 

    There is a fairly new tool in criminology called geographic profiling. It was pioneered in Canada in 1989 and has become an increasingly popular tool in criminology. The overarching concept of geographic profiling is taking a look at the locations of a string of crimes to determine the likely residence of a criminal.

     While researching a novel about a decade ago, I added a new wrinkle that I called "the black hole effect". As the retired FBI agent explained it, it's the absence of evidence in a locality that could prove illuminating. Criminals such as serial killers and kidnapping rings generally don't like fouling their own nests. In the case of prolific criminals who have static residences, the very lack of crimes in their area could help geographic profilers zero in on a suspect's residence. 

     For instance, even though he wasn't prolific by today's standards, modern day geographic profilers had once theorized that Jack the Ripper likely lived within a 200 yard locality in Whitechapel / Spitalfields partly because none of his five canonical murders occurred on Fashion, Flower and Dean and Thrawl Streets.

     So, now I'm going to bring my crime-writing nerdery out of the 19th and 20th centuries to focus on the redacted affidavit that was released this morning by the Justice Department. Left wing journalists and citizen journalists like me were quivering for evidence of a smoking gun or two only to find out there's no "there" there.

     Many of the redaction were common-sensical and expected, such as the names of the federal agents who'd carried out the latest search warrant on August 8th. So, the affidavit proved to be a disappointing blob of big black holes.

     But sharp legal minds such as Chuck Rosenberg's spotted something of interest outside the heavily-redacted affidavit, namely the memo attached to it. The heavy redactions are also a common tactic used by federal authorities to prevent sabotage to the investigation. Former US Attorney Joyce Vance was also on the panel and this is what she said:

     "One very interesting tidbit we get from the legal memo that DOJ submitted to unseal the redacted version of the affidavit is what I think is the first effort to quantify the number of cooperating witnesses that DOJ had when they obtained this search warrant. They're talking about the need to protect their witnesses from any sort of potential harm, and they say that there are a significant number of civilian witnesses. So we don't know -- is that five? Is that 10?"

     Yes, how many civilian witnesses rolled over on the fat man and, if there were many of them, why the sense of alarm?