SILVER SPRING - Santa Claus and the Thanksgiving turkey took a back seat to Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose yesterday at the annual holiday parade.
People wearing purple antler hats that read "Thank You MCPD" cheered as Moose waved from the back of a vintage convertible, which followed motorcycles from Maryland, Virginia and D.C. police departments.
"We're all behind Chief Moose," said one hat wearer, Terry Hunter of Silver Spring.
Moose led the task force that investigated the sniper attacks that began in Montgomery County in early October. The deadly attacks spread to the District of Columbia and Virginia before two suspects were arrested on Oct. 24.
Moose's role as chief spokesman for the task force gained him widespread popularity. "I continue to hear from people throughout the nation," he said yesterday.
At least 20,000 people, twice as many as in previous years, turned out for the parade in yesterday's cold wind, said Susan Hoffman, a spokeswoman for the county government.
"We wanted to let the public say thanks to the task force personally," said Douglas M. Duncan, Montgomery County executive. "It's all part of the healing process."
Celebrating survival
Rosemary DeRosa Lange of Silver Spring attended the parade to honor the law enforcement officers, she said. As a kindergarten teacher's assistant at St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church, she worried about the children during the attacks. "After all this happened, I was concerned about their safety." Some of the children were worried about her, too, while she was working as a crossing guard, she said.
Moose's fellow task force leaders, FBI Special Agent Gary M. Bald and Special Agent Michael R. Bouchard of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, also rode in the parade, along with Duncan, Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes, and many other elected officials.
In addition to the police and officials, high school marching bands, charities, and local businesses joined the parade. Joe Gruber, 4, covered his ears as the Rockville High School Pipe Band marched by, playing about a dozen bagpipes. His mother, Jennifer Gruber, said they have come to the holiday parade most years. "This is really different because of the law enforcement," said the Silver Spring resident.
While the parade was mostly celebratory, it included a sober reminder of the victims of the sniper attacks - a Ride On bus driven in memory of Conrad Johnson, killed Oct. 22 in Aspen Hill.
The parade occurred after an interfaith service where about 150 people gathered to remember the victims and express thanks to police. Eight clergymen offered readings and prayers at St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church.
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, offered his condolences to the victims' families and expressed his thanks to the law enforcement officers. "I see Chief Moose and I know the time that he spent, and the anxiety and concern," he said.
McCarrick and others asked that the victims of the attack not be forgotten. "We need to remember the victims and their families," Moose said.
Building the case
Meanwhile, Virginia prosecutors have assembled a team of veteran investigators from several counties to help build the cases against sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.
The investigators, about a dozen in all, include detectives from Spotsylvania, Prince William and Fairfax counties - each of which had a fatal shooting during the three weeks of sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington area.
Also, police in Antigua have detained a Jamaican woman on suspicion that she fraudulently obtained an Antiguan passport with assistance from Muhammad, an official said. The woman was detained in Antigua and Barbuda on Friday night, said John Fuller, the head of a task force investigating Muhammad's activities while in the Caribbean country.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.