Sports Illustrated writer Peter King's column on Monday mentions a family visit to Seattle with his wife and attending a Mariners game. It won't surprise anyone who, say, was followed nearly a half-block by a panhandler following Tuesday's loss to the Yankees:
"After the game, we walked 1.1 miles from Safeco Field to our hotel in the city. Man, that was one scary walk. To say aggressive panhandling in that city is rampant is an understatement — I guess particularly after night baseball games, when there are folks walking back to their hotels in a good area of the city. We gave three times, and after that, we just put our heads down and got back to the hotel.
"Craziest thing to me: On a brisk 15- to 18-minute walk from a huge sports facility in a major American city to a hotel in a lovely downtown area, we saw zero police officers."
But we pride ourselves, it seems, on having so many fewer officers than other cities, right?
