Now, Holder is going to investigate the Ferguson police department to see if he can find out what is wrong with the department, such that, the Black community does not trust them. With his statement, it is clear that Holder has a bias against the police department. He seems, also, to be blind to the actions or lack of actions to help the situation by the Black community. If Holder wanted to help, he would have said to the Black community that he had "total trust" in the Ferguson police department and the conduct of the police man who shot Brown. If both Holder and Obama say some thing that gives the impression that they do not trust Ferguson's police department and "many" of those around the USA, it gives confirmation that the Black community is correct to not trust the police. Can you think of any thing more destructive that our President, who was elected to represent all of us, could do than blame the police rather than Brown?
Now, the investigation. I used to teach decision theory at a major university and here is the type of question that the media should be asking. They should have asked Holder for a list of the possible major things that he could expect to find. The next question should be for him to use his experience and assign probabilities to each possible out come. The next question should then be, what will you do given each out come? If this seems strange, think about it and you will see that this is what an intelligent person does every day. If the actions that you would take for most of the out comes turns out to be the same, then why do you need to do any investigation? Just take that action and be done. You also have to answer the question, will the situation get worse while I am doing my investigation? If that is the case, it may be better to take the action now given the down side is not as bad as the damage done by waiting. The above may sound complex, but it is not.
Let's say that you go into your kitchen in the morning and hear a sound coming from one of your cupboards? You know by the size of the cupboard that it has to be some small animal and not a lion. You could open the cupboard and see what it was so that you could get the correct weapon to dispatch the animal thus avoiding the risk of getting the wrong weapon. The problem with that is that the animal may escape and thus get away or into a place where you could not get it. If you get a weapon first, you risk that it may be too small, but at least you have a chance of dispatching the animal. If you opened the door without a weapon you would have no chance of dispatching the animal.
Now, isn't it clear that rather than blindly following a step by step recipe in a decision situation that you need to take your prior knowledge and estimate the future possibilities to that you can develop your decision plan? What Obama and Holder are doing is fooling you by making you think that they are doing the right thing with their "step by step" recipe rather than using their brain.
