Ended up lucky again.   As a legislator I’d written a ton of laws to make my poor-side-of-the-tracks neighborhood safer and better.  By now the guy who beat me out for Mayor had changed stripes and been elected (after the Wellstone plane crash tragedy) the Republican United States Senator from Minnesota (see why not dropping that placard was such a major regret?) and the incoming Mayor was a political ally of mine from legislative days – the Senate author for many of my neighborhood improvement bills – so he gave me a cabinet level job being in charge of a new City Department named “Housing and Neighborhood Improvement,” gave me a just-completed study on what’s wrong in the neighborhoods, and told me “Dust-off those laws we wrote; make it happen.”

Not only was it fortunate to land a new job so fast (and better paying even), but how many in the world can say they were lucky enough to be in charge of enforcing the very laws they wrote?!  And I needed the chance to prove their worth because, as Clarence Darrow often said, “Laws don’t execute themselves in this world.”  Which was really true in this case:  three previous Mayors and two previous Police Chiefs had come and gone and still the laws were only in the statute books and not being utilized.

Clarence Darrow had it right: “Laws don’t execute themselves”

In fact, how many people in the world can say they were lucky enough to serve in all three branches of government in a continuum from being a lawyer seeing what’s unjust, making greater justice possible being a legislator, then making justice happen in the Executive Branch, and finally back to the courtroom to explain how the law is constitutional.   Tomorrow’s that story.

Tomorrow:  1,131 Police Calls in One Year