I make regular visits to obscure LAPD offices.

Last month, I took the bus to the 77th street station in South Central for a meeting about community response to racially motivated gang violence. In the midst of "hard core gang prosecutors" and station chiefs discussing violence between Blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles, the ghetto bird came home to roost. The shadows spinning across the windows, the noise of the rotors interrupted angry platitudes about eliminating every gang member in Los Angeles. Needless to say, I felt out of place.

Today was a little more mundane. 13 blocks south on Broadway, I arranged to meet a LAPD Detective and pick up a bundle of police reports coded as hate crimes. I wore my county badge, suit jacket and tried to look respectable as I entered the 5th floor major crimes detective unit. I felt like I was in limbo on the other side of the T.V. screen, in some prime-time crime drama. Anyway, I picked up the reports from the detective. It was a bright and multi-cultural feeling office, with a nice view.

I skimmed through a few of the crimes--it is a shocking thing to read of violence in the technical, straightforward, simple words of a police report. Suspects and victims.

So that's what the taxpayers have me doing. Since federal taxes fund 1/4 of the county budget, I think most of you are technically paying my salary. I'm trying to keep you updated.