Today I was driving east on Chandler, approaching Coldwater Canyon, when a young dark haired man nervously came around the corner. He was wearing a baggy gray sweatshirt and dark jeans. A woman pushing a baby carriage, and a homeless man, followed by a young woman, were running after the gray sweatshirt guy. I rolled down my window and heard, “He stole my wallet! Get him!”

I saw the suspect crouch behind a parked car. I backed up my car. The young woman and the homeless man confronted the thief and he surrended the wallet to the woman that he had stole it from.

I asked the out-of-breath woman if she needed a ride. She said yes and got into my car. I immediately dialed “911” and reported the crime. The suspect began to walk slowly back south down Coldwater towards Magnolia. As I drove 15 mph, with the suspect in full view, I screamed for the cops to come. It was the California Highway Patrol whom I was speaking to. They needed to patch my call into LAPD. As the suspect calmly walked….with his victim sitting next to me in my car…the operator cautioned me “not to follow him. If you hit him, he could sue you…” My emergency flashers blinked, as I slowly drove south down Coldwater, watching the every move of the criminal.

We got back to the Ralph’s parking lot, where apparently this young woman had been robbed just outside the front entrance, near the watermelons. I saw the suspect cross the street and walk into Walgreens. Still no LAPD. We went inside Ralph’s and again dialed 911 using the store land line. The cops finally showed up.

Two cruisers: One with two female cops, the other with two male cops. They went into Walgreens but the suspect already had escaped. Courteously, kindly, professionally the police took our report. One officer said he suspected that “a gang of Armenians” who have been coming to the Valley to engage in street crime, such as purse snatchings, might be responsible for this latest incident. The victim, a student from Germany, was grateful that I had stayed with her to file the report.

Nobody was shot, nobody was hurt, nobody was caught…yet.

We need to enact a tax, payable at the gas pump, to hire another 20,000 LAPD officers to make our city safer. We need all “911” calls to go directly to the LAPD, not the highway patrol, because the majority of mobile emergency calls have nothing to do with vehicle accidents.