Thin Blue Line

From The Star: (stupid registration)

Kansas City Council members, alarmed at the city's mounting murder rate, are pressing the Police Department to fulfill a pledge to put more officers on the street.

Councilman Jim Rowland, chairman of the Budget and Audit Committee, said he met Monday with Police Chief James Corwin and received assurances that the department would begin hiring 20 additional officers each year, as voters were promised when they approved a tax increase for police stations in 2002.

Earlier this year, police officials acknowledged that they had hired only five of the 60 officers that were anticipated so far because of shortfalls in other parts of their budget.

All of this reminds me of that Woody Allen joke from Annie Hall:

There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.