Dallas Police

Ninety-year-old Gena Scarbrough said she learned how to shoot when growing up on a farm but had never pointed a weapon at anyone until this week, when she stopped a burglar with a borrowed pistol. Police say Scarbrough stood in her carport Tuesday night waiting for an intruder to leave the house. When the burglar climbed out a window carrying a stereo and speakers, Scarbrough aimed the .22-caliber pistol at him. "I told him: 'Put it down right there and don't move.

William Rathburn, a Los Angeles deputy chief who coordinated security measures for the 1984 Olympics and has been one of the Police Department's most successful anti-gang crime fighters, was named chief of police Friday in Dallas. His departure, after a 27-year Los Angeles Police Department career in which he was considered a potential successor to Chief Daryl F.

Four teenagers claiming to be vampires went on a drug-crazed rampage, vandalizing dozens of cars and homes, spray-painting racial slurs and burning a church, police said. Fascinated by the occult, the teens smoked methamphetamine-laced marijuana before going on a spree through the quiet middle-class neighborhood and causing $300,000 in damage Thursday, officers said. The fire destroyed the office and fellowship hall at Bethany Lutheran Church.

John Chase was a cop giving out a traffic ticket when he died. A deranged man--significantly, a black man--pulled the pistol from the policeman's holster, terrorized him and then shot him. Dozens of people watched it happen last Saturday on a downtown city street. They watched as Chase, 25, begged for his life before being shot in the face. Then he was shot twice more. And in the initial recounting by police, there were reports of people in the crowd goading the killer, Carl D.

President Bush on Monday repeatedly condemned the entertainment industry for what he labeled its "sick" practice of producing films, television programs and music that glorify cop-killing. Issuing a stern challenge to Hollywood, Bush told law officers here that he felt a "moral obligation" to speak out against certain rap songs and other "filth" that "rejoice in standing up against law enforcement."

A few weeks ago, a young woman and her attorney called the sports department of The Washington Post. From a maternity ward. The baby barely delivered, they were calling to announce that a very famous professional athlete had fathered the newborn. And why exactly were they calling the newspaper? "To get some pub." And getting some pub, as in publicity, was the first step in "getting paid." Well, in this case we gave no pub.

The bogus drug busts are notorious: Mexican immigrants were jailed, went broke or got deported, only to have the evidence against them fall apart. The bricks of white powder they were charged with peddling turned out to be plaster of Paris--not cocaine or speed, as police had claimed. In all, more than 70 arrests have come unstrung this winter in a very public crescendo of bad cop work and shoddy prosecution. Now Dallas is in an uproar. Federal investigators are probing the police department.

In the deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history, a man crashed his pickup truck into a cafeteria crowded with lunchtime patrons here Wednesday afternoon and began firing rapidly and indiscriminately with a semiautomatic pistol, killing 22 people. The gunman later was found dead of a gunshot wound in a restaurant restroom, police said. The massacre resulted in injuries to 20 others, many of them listed in "very critical condition."

About 50 protesters upset over the firing of Dallas' first black police chief marched to City Hall and demanded the removal of the mayor and city manager. Some in the crowd shouted "Amen" as rally organizer Darren Reagan listed demands, including the recall of Mayor Laura Miller and the removal of City Manager Ted Benavides. The protesters accuse the two of orchestrating the dismissal of Chief Terrell Bolton.

It didn't take long for new Dallas Police Chief Mack Vines to learn how efficient his department is--but the lesson cost him $15. Just after he was sworn into office Monday, Vines found that an officer had placed a parking ticket on his car's windshield.