A Black Uniform and a Silver Badge

You know what? Some of the people on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list aren't THAT awful.

A little Wikipediaing around led me to this article: FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

Some of the things I read surprised me. Did you know that:

• The idea of the list came about over a game of Hearts?
  
• Of the 491 fugitives who have been listed, five have been removed after being deemed to be no longer dangerous?
• Of the 460 who have been captured or located, 151 (31%) of them were found because of public assistance?

What really surprised me, though, was just who's on the list. Of course, there are the obvious choices - Osama Bin Laden tops the list, with a $52 million reward for information leading to his capture. There's the guy who killed 18 people and led a pretty nasty gang, and there's the guy who stole $7,000,000.

The one that jumps out at me is Jason Derek Brown (pictured). He's wanted for - get this - killing a security guard and biking (that's on a mountain bike, not a motorbike) away with $56,000. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not condoning what he did. Murder is obviously a serious offense, and $56,000 is a pretty hefty amount of dolla billz. Really though, does it warrant a spot on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list? Surely there must be someone else out there who's committed a harsher crime. Do his crimes scream "repeat offender, danger to America"? He doesn't look like a top ten worthy kind of guy, does he? Even with a little help from photoshop, he still doesn't look that mean. He's suspected to be hiding out in Western Canada - a hotbed of crime, as we all know.

If he's the worst there is, maybe that says something about people, or maybe it says something about law enforcement. Maybe people aren't as bad as I thought. Maybe U.S. law enforcement is just damn good at catching people. It's either reassuring or deeply unsettling that the FBI don't think there are any fugitives who are more dangerous.

All I know is that no top ten most wanted list of mine is complete without the guy who put the bomp in the bomp-bah-bomp-bah-bomp. Who was that man?