Big City Nights

Early Friday morning, two youths were apprehended after neighbors called police to tell them that a burglary was in progress. The eyewitnesses said they saw the pair tossing garbage bags full of something from an outdoor second floor landing. It might have been laundry, though 12:45 AM seems a little late to get get one last load in. As it turns out, the bags were full of marijuana and had come from the basement where there was enough pot to, well, fill garbage bags. Thanks to the keen observation skills of the neighbors, as well as the waist-high bags, police were able to make fairly short work of this one, including the six hundred plants being grown in the basement.
Except this wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Two years ago, police arrested a burglar at the same address carting out the same ill-gotten booty. Much has been made of the fact that Oakland's police department has just had to lay off eighty officers, but not two years ago. Six hundred pot plants didn't just spring up overnight at this same location. I know that only Baretta or T.J. Hooker have the kind of moxie and resources it would take to take down the bad guys and keep them down, but in this case, I guess you have to thank the two knuckleheads who decided to break into the same location two years later for moving the investigation along. Nothing says "probable cause" like a Hefty bag full of hydroponic weed. Then, of course, there's the irony factor: It was only a week and a half ago that Oakland's city council authorized large-scale pot farming for the purposes of selling, and taxing, bushels of medicinal herb to the populace. The "street value" of the nabbed doobage was estimated at a quarter of a million dollars. Pump that back into the city budget and maybe we could get a couple cops back on the job. Wow. I must be stoned.