On the face of it it seems quite a bizarre and extreme case (I don't think the killer was a "little odd" but a paranoid bigot with a gun and a vastly inflated sense of his personal importance) - until you hear of similar "brush it under the carpet" decisions from within the same police dept. The terrible action of one gun nut is one thing, while the (non) actions of the police dept. in response to that incident and others like it are another, which potentially require further investigation into how they handle race related crimes.