As if we needed another reminder right now that police make mistakes, the front page of today's Philadelphia Inquirer features yet another article (this one written by three authors) about the bumbling police in Camden, New Jersey.

How could 150 law enforcement officers, armed with search dogs, all-terrain vehicles, mounted equestrian units and thermal-imaging equipment, not find the children in the very yard where they were last seen playing? How could no one - not police, parents, or even the dozens of neighbors who helped search - have thought to check that trunk?

The thing is, I make plenty of mistakes myself. We all do. When, as in the case of three dead boys, mistakes are made which cannot be corrected, it is part of the natural human condition for the blaming to start. And, because 150 officers were involved in this 3-day search, many officers can be blamed. Still, there's anonymity and bureaucracy in numbers, and one cop among 150 doesn't really stand out.

Rather than blame any particular officer, I'm wondering what happened to the old expression, "Too many cooks spoil the broth!" It may sound simplistic, but I think one, two, maybe three officers could have done a better job than 150. I think that it's far more likely that the trunk would have been searched. Early, and maybe more than once. I think the presence of 150 officers is probably why the trunk was never searched. (That plus the fact that they weren't looking for marijuana, which always motivates police to open trunks.) They got in each other's way, made assumptions, and created a crowded situation not conducive to individual initiative, and in all probability, clueless officers were looking at each other for cues on what to do next. This ought to be common sense, really; I can write a blog post like this in an hour, but if someone told me to work with 150 bloggers to come up with a "collaborative" post on this same subject, I doubt it would be finished even by Friday. However, the 150 of us would have 150 different excuses why we couldn't get it done, which illustrates -- sadly -- that there's strength in numbers! (A principle I hope is taken into account in the war on terrorism.)

It goes without saying that a committee is investigating this matter, and they're going to submit a report. Naturally, the report is already being attacked -- before it's been issued:

Even the investigative report expected next week has come under fire from police unions and local politicians because two of the three members of the panel helped lead the search. "Who is going to indict themselves?" asked Wilson, a former city police officer who has been collecting information informally. Another group led by former mayoral candidate Keith Walker is investigating on its own.

The offices of Camden County Prosecutor Vincent P. Sarubbi - who appointed the three-member panel - and of Camden Police Chief Edwin Figueroa have declined to comment on the case until after the panel's report is released.

It's all so typical.

Fortunately, mistakes by Camden police are local enough issues that I doubt Bush will be blamed.

Bush is lucky that no one thought to summon Homeland Security for assistance. (And that Camden is nowhere near London.)

UPDATE: Eric Berlin (who also comments below) takes the view that this is a case of parental negligence. True; it certainly does. But incompetence of A is never a defense to incompetence of B. Police routinely deal with idiots, insane people, drug addicts and the like, and I don't think it exonerates them that in this case the parents behaved as absolute idiots. As Eric Berlin notes, the parents are guilty of:

letting a mentally retarded 11-year-old play with two kindergarteners, around the wide-open car that has attracted them before, without adult supervision, and then waiting three hours to call the police when they go missing.

In previous posts on the subject, I argued against Toyota being liable, but I still think that under the most basic standards -- whether based on law or just common sense -- the police were under a duty to open that trunk.