Word: dragnets
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Exactly ten minutes after terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports the morning of Dec. 27, the news flashed to Athens international airport, where a scheduled flight of Israel's El Al airline was preparing for takeoff. Moments later, a police dragnet began searching for possible terrorists. For the much criticized Athens facility, where Shi'ite extremists last June boarded TWA Flight 847 before hijacking it to Beirut, times had changed...
...Number of fugitives arrested earlier this month in a week-long nationwide Justice Department operation, the largest single dragnet ever...
...believed that such mass DNA collections--which began in Europe--would never catch on in the U.S., with its stalwart protections against invasive search and seizure. But the temptation to solve unspeakable crimes, particularly ones involving children, has proved powerful. Truro's is at least the 19th DNA dragnet in the U.S. As testing becomes faster and cheaper, such collections are becoming more frequent. And the debate about whether they are right sliced this seaside town in two last week, just it has Baton Rouge, La.; Charlottesville, Va.; and Miami...
Probably not. A better question might be, Do DNA dragnets work? The answer so far is, rarely. The largest sweep in the U.S. took place in Miami, where in 1994 cops sampled 2,300 men in search of a serial killer. The dragnet did not catch the killer. Of the 18 publicized U.S. sweeps, only one--a narrow sampling of 25 workers at a nursing home--has been successful, according to a 2004 study by criminologist Samuel Walker of the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Walker called the sweeps "unproductive" and said that if they are to continue, national guidelines...
...follows business, and CSI--and its descendants, like CBS's Bruckheimer-produced Without a Trace and Cold Case-- are above all damn fine business. The shows follow the procedural format pioneered by Dragnet 50 years ago: crime stories, completely wrapped up in one episode, with minimal attention to the inner lives of any of the characters. A serial drama--say, Six Feet Under or 24--requires that you watch every week and pay close attention. That's a tall order given the competition from cable to the Internet to plain old busy work schedules, and networks are increasingly afraid that...