User Reviews

A well dressed and oh so polite young man robs a small town department store. He then robs a drug store and is spotted by a boy as he is running to a black sedan and making his get away. As Mathews and his deputy are interviewing neighbors in the area, the boy, playing cops and robbers, approaches them and pointing a cap pistol at them and tells them to get their hands up and they play along with him and do. They then ask the kid if he has seen a stranger around and he says yes and tells them he saw the guy get into a black sedan. They thank him and start to turn away when he asks "don't you want the license plate number?" He tells them it was a yellow and black plate and gives them the number but that he didn't get the state. He comes to the station and Mathews gives him a license plate book with the plates of the 48 states and Canada and is careful to tell the boy (actually for the audience's benefit and not the boy's) that the plates are in color. Interesting how very similar all the state plates were - numbers and the states' names and rarely with any graphics. As with many of these episodes what is most interesting are the glimpses into life in the 1950s. A kid playing cops and robbers, a small town main street abutting a residential area, a real estate office that hitches up rides for people wanting a lift, both men and women wearing stylish hats - little things that make this a fun series.

Child actor Paul Engel provides the essential information for Chief Crawford to catch an ex-con and his girlfriend who are leaving town for Texas after he has robbed several stores as a "gentlemen robber."

The kid not only sees him after his robbery of a furniture store, but ID's his car and what state his lisence plates are from. It is interesting in this era, there are no miranda rights, but the chief has to get permission from the boys mom to bring him to the station to help him. This after the kid sticks up the chief with his cap gun.

The caahier at the furiture store is an actress who made their last tv appearance on Kolchak-The Night Stalker years later. Engel would finish his child acting career in the early 1960's.

**SPOILERS** How did these guys EVER solve crimes like this? Most of these stories are pretty close to real events that happened to actual Trooper, Patrolmen, Rangers, State Police, and other agencies of the similar type. Now, the other reviewer, Paularoc captured it just right.

The other things are a change in the attitudes of police. Today, if a kid has a cap gun, he's very likely to be shot dead, or at the very least, given a hard take-down and cuffed. Then, and I remember it well, cops were friendlier, and a lot less likely to cover a kid. They'd actually talk to you, and not be geared up with body armor, armed to the teeth, tasers (which it seems they'd rather use a firearm instead of) and the didn't try to project an attitude of "Fear Me, Or Else".

It's tough to be a cop, it's supposed to be that way. If it was easy, ANYBODY could do it. Today's cops have a different way of seeing the public they serve. Maybe it's the times, but everyone isn't a killer, and yeah, I get really upset when I hear cops talking about how dangerous their job is.. If they're doing it only for respect of themselves, they should be athletes.