APAD: The Usual Suspects.

Meaning:

   "The usual suspects" are the people habitually suspected or arrested

   following a crime.  The phrase is usually used in regard to scapegoats

   rather than actual perpetrators of the crime in question.

 

Background:

 

   It was spoken by Captain Louis Renault, the French prefect of police,

   played by Claude Rains in the 1942 U.S. film Casablanca.

 

   But that was not the first. The expression and the extended "round up the

   usual suspects" were in common use then in the police and underworld

   communities of gangland New York.

 

   ...

 

  'The usual suspects' is now as commonly used as other lines from the film

  that were spoken by Bogart and which were much more quickly taken into the

  public consciousness:

 

     "Play it once, Sam. For old times' sake."

     "Here's looking at you, kid."

     "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

 

- www.phrases.org.uk

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The phrase could be very useful as people look for causes when things go wrong

as things always do. If networks at the Pentagon just went to pieces, it's

hackers, AI-armed this year, from Russia, China, or North Korea. If the

Chinese economy tanks, the usual suspects include the perennial overseas

reactionary forces. As we are entering the fire season in California, global

warming once again will be among the usual suspects along with run-of-the-mill

socialpathic pyros.