Not so black and white.

[October 30th, 2002] The Nose, like everyone else, was relieved at the news that the cops back east had picked up their prime suspect in the D.C. sniper attacks.

And, he was surprised that in all the exhaustive coverage that preceded and followed the arrest, there was one angle that had been left seemingly unexplored: race.

Here you have a black police chief and a black suspect and no one is connecting any dots--let alone acknowledging they're there.

Well, almost no one.

The sniper's fingerprints were barely dry last week when the talking mouths of AM radio began to gloat. For days they had sputtered at what law-enforcement experts said was the probable profile of the then-unknown shooter: a white guy in his 30s. Someone kinda like Timothy McVeigh. Someone kinda like a young Unabomber. Someone kinda like, well, the target audience for Lars Larson.

But, the experts got it wrong. The suspect was 41. And his name wasn't Kaczynski, but Muhammad.

Michael Savage, the syndicated talk-show host who follows Lars on KXL radio, was practically giggling with glee on Friday afternoon, saying that given the arrest of John Allen Muhammad, all white men deserved an apology.

Now, the Nose has to admit there's a bit of hypocrisy among the critics of racial profiling who were silent during the manhunt in Montgomery County, while every cracker in a white van was assumed to be a trigger-happy terrorist.

But the Nose, whose skin is as pale as a saltine, ain't looking for anyone to say "sorry."

The cops were simply playing the odds. According to noted criminologist James Alan Fox, 55 percent of sniper killers are white and 91 percent are under 40.

The truth is, racial profiling works. And the truth is, it can be abused.

In a lot of ways, it's like affirmative action. And if you need proof that the dicey social-engineering sword cuts both ways, take a look at the man who was at the head of the national manhunt.

Right or wrong, Charles Moose will get credit for tracking down Muhammad (just as he would have continued to be second-guessed had the death toll climbed further).

And it's pretty clear that Moose ended up where he is, in part, because of his race.

Moose, you may recall, got his first police job in Portland. His experience at the time he was offered the job? None. He was a history major at the University of North Carolina. But he was interested in law enforcement, and when he signed on in 1975, the Portland Police Bureau had a total of 10 black cops. Moose would become the city's first black sergeant, black lieutenant and black captain, then, in 1993, the city's first black police chief.

As he climbed that ladder, Moose heard the grumblings from white officers who were passed over for promotions. Did racial politics help Moose rise to the top in Portland? Absolutely. But it also derailed him earlier in his career.

In 1991, Moose, then a captain, was one of three finalists for the police chief job in Jackson, Miss. When he was flown down for final interviews with the selection committee, Moose made what turned out to be a huge tactical error: He brought his wife, Sandy, who happens to be as white as Timothy McVeigh.

As the Jackson Advocate reported, that fact didn't sit well with at least one of the committee members, who was quoted as saying that when "Moose walked in with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white wife, that killed any chances he had of being police chief here."

Had the racial politics of Mississippi been different, Moose might have ended up as the top cop in Jackson. Which means he might not have been looking for a job when Montgomery County needed a new chief. Which means he might not have been there looking for a white sniper in a white van while a black guy cruised through town in a blue Caprice.

What's race got to do with it? Probably not as much as Savage thinks, but more than a lot of folks are comfortable with. Either way, it won't hurt to bring the discussion off of the AM airwaves.