Must have been right before their lunch break

Ilya Somin at Volokh links to this very frightening episode in a neighborhood near our nation’s capital

Yesterday, two men tried to break into my friend’s home while she was inside. One man attempted to pry the door open and the other tried to get in the window. She called the police and, because the men were still milling around in a nearby alley, she was able to identify the perpetrators. One of them had just been released that morning . . .

The police told her that “D.C. doesn’t have an attempted burglary statute” and so they could not arrest the men. They let them go, although now they know who my friend is, where she lives, and that she fingered them to the cops.

You can go here to see all of the different attempted burglary statutes that DC actually does have.

Way to go, DC police! I’m sure that had our lady complainant had a firearm that wasn’t disassembled and locked away, the police would have been easily able to find that statute.