1:21pm | If we ever wondered whether the Long Beach Police Department reads the Long Beach Post, we can now answer that question in the affirmative, as within 48 hours of the appearance of “How Interested Are Long Beach Police in Bicycle Theft?” a South Division lieutenant contacted me to apologize for the matter’s having fallen through the cracks — and more importantly, to determine whether in fact the guy I had in mind was a bicycle thief.
By the following Monday another officer had contacted me to obtain the necessary details. Agreeing that this sounded suspect, the next day the officer paid the gentleman in question a visit — and, I’m happy to say, determined the guy to be on the up-and-up (my suspicion having arisen partly from a fib the guy had told me (the nature of which is unimportant)).
What’s the moral of this little tale: Don’t fib to potential customers, because doing so might lead someone to believe you’re a criminal? If the police are unresponsive to your attempts to let them know about possible criminal activity, write an article about it? Don’t report suspicious activity to the police because the behavior might be perfectly innocent? Or is this a case (to paraphrase from a great episode of The Simpsons) of there being no moral to the story, with this just being some stuff that happened?
Hey, all I can tell you is that the police responded, and it appears my would-be bike thief is nothing of the sort. And that the LBPD reads the Post. And I, for one, am glad of both.