The East Bay news points out that things can differ significantly only a few blocks apart:

When an eighteen-year-old wielding a Mac-10 submachine gun shot into a passing car from where he stood on California near Parker Street in Berkeley at 9:30 a.m. on July 13, residents speed-dialed the police, who arrived rapidly and, following their descriptions and directions, arrested the shooter. Residents also pointed out a house into which his fifteen-year-old associate had run with the gun. He was nabbed too. “Without the citizen involvement,” says Officer Wesley Hester, “we wouldn’t have caught these people.”

Detection systems are critical to security. Especially when prevention has been neutered by the NRA and a submachine gun in residential neighborhood is a reality. Nearby, a neighborhood faced a different problem:

Just after midnight on July 12, Walnut Creek cops were summoned by a resident who described a blond woman standing in front of a house on Los Altos Avenue, staring. “When the reporting party approached her,” reads the report, “she mumbled about Democrats.”

No word on whether police were able to catch this dangerous mumbler. Incidentally, what are the chances that Walnut Creek residents are against banning submachine guns? There are certainly a fair number of NRA contributions and Bush-Cheney sponsors according to the political contribution records.