Long Arm

It worked during Operation Desert Storm. A whole group of Iraqi soldiers looked up at the sky one day, saw an approaching U.S. Army helicopter and just threw up their hands and surrendered. Of course Philadelphia is not the desert, but the Police Department wages war on crime every day. So why not use a helicopter? That's what those lights from the sky were last night. If you were anywhere near where a crime was reported and you saw a helicopter zoom in low, spotlight blazing, it wasn't a space ship, it was "Chopper Three.

John Jordan is adept at evasion. He has 20 addresses, 12 aliases, three Social Security numbers, several birth dates, and a criminal record of 37 arrests that dates to 1982, according to court records. Yesterday morning, he added more notches to his resume - escaping from a courtroom and eluding both his trial judge and a police officer who gave chase. When Jordan, who lists his age as 36, showed up at the Criminal Justice Center to face court action in a theft case and requested a continuance, Common Pleas Court Judge Peter F. Rodgers was skeptical.

I SAT IN bed on a recent Sunday, sipping my coffee while I read the morning paper. Then I spotted the headline, and my morning calm was shattered: "An unrivaled hunger? She's 5-foot-5, 99 pounds. Her appetite puts 'voracious' to shame. " This petite eating machine can strip 134 buffalo wings in 12 minutes. I glanced at my protruding middle-aged midriff and shouted, "Unfair!" Since the federal 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, followed by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in '67, the long arm of the law has wielded a shield to protect minorities, foreigners, women, Branch Davidians and geezers from disparate treatment.

COULD THE long arm of city law reach into Thomas Jefferson University and save Eakin's "The Gross Clinic" from being sold? We don't know if Mayor Street's suggestion to designate the painting "an historic object" will actually work, but it's a genius idea: At the very least, it may result in a long legal battle that buys time to find another solution to the sale. That, anyway, was the fate of the last cultural treasure that the city designated as historic: The Maxfield Parrish/Louis Tiffany mural "Dream Garden.

Apparently the long arm of the law is not quite long enough. It cannot reach up to the benches of the very people allegedly sworn to uphold the law to the fullest: its judges. I am outraged that the judges recently suspended for accepting payment from union roofers continue to receive pay, and even more outraged at the Feb. 11 editorial in support of that situation. When I was a court employee, two of my co-workers were arrested on criminal charges. Both men were suspended without pay. During this time, six months for one and eight months for the other, both men endured great financial hardship.

Regrets, we've had a few . . . Welcome back to our weekly feature highlighting our less- than-brilliant moments. Today's Daily News Regret dates back to Jan. 9, 1970. Around that time, recent federal investigations had raised suspicions of prevalent Mafia activity in North Jersey. The Daily News Editorial Board, spectacular soothsayers that they were, assured readers that they were safe from the long arm of the Mob: The corruption in North Jersey stemming from the rackets has long been talked about.

The long arm of the law has gotten longer in Camden and Gloucester counties now that both have joined up with a task force to go after the "worst of the worst" fugitives from the region. The Regional Fugitive Task Force is a partnership between the U.S. Marshals Service and the county sheriff and prosecutor offices. "This takes it to another level," said Camden County Sheriff Michael W. McLaughlin, who announced that his office had officially joined the task force this week.

THAT WAS a beautiful piece by Jonathan D. Josey III on the police shooting of Vincent Parsons. Props to him! I feel like he spoke for many of us. Let's not condone the activities of adult criminals who try to break the long arm of the law. Let's not dismiss police misconduct, but let's not extinguish our collective faith in the boys in blue - 'cause who do you call first when something bad happens? (It is not the Ghostbusters.) There's a sentiment out there - "The hell with the cops!"

If there was a criticism of Secret South, last year's effort from 16 Horsepower, it was about its relentless mood: The album felt like a long prayer ritual, a series of harrowing tableaux in which leader David Eugene Edwards played the tortured soul wrestling with temptation, fear, and the long arm of a wrathful Lord. Edwards apparently likes the drama. Friday at the Theatre of Living Arts, the singer and his backing trio cultivated a similar mood of thick introspection and made it the primary focus of a spellbinding 90-minute performance.

COVER BOY Time magazine has made an appropriate selection in President George W. Bush for its closely followed "Person of the Year" designation. President Bush is a miracle man and a magician. He had everything going against him in his re-election bid, yet emerged victorious by a decisive margin. He brought us a catastrophic, expensive, deadly, elective war in Iraq that has no end in sight; he wrecked the economy, in record time turning massive surpluses into deficits; he betrayed his conservative base by demonstrating that he is a big-government liberal, further extending the long arm of the central government.

They blew it. New Jersey sweethearts Sara Blasse and Henry Goode Jr. had a decent crime of opportunity on their hands earlier this week when they swiped a $500 laptop from a parked car in Chesilhurst, authorities said. OK, the heist wasn't perfect - the owner of the computer spotted them and called police - but the darling couple managed to escape the long arm of the law in Blasse's Kia Sorento. Then Goode crashed the Kia, Blasse broke her arm, a bunch of other things went wrong and Blasse tried to lie her way out of the whole debacle by telling cops that she got hurt in a car accident while performing oral sex on a male prostitute, authorities said.

THAT WAS a beautiful piece by Jonathan D. Josey III on the police shooting of Vincent Parsons. Props to him! I feel like he spoke for many of us. Let's not condone the activities of adult criminals who try to break the long arm of the law. Let's not dismiss police misconduct, but let's not extinguish our collective faith in the boys in blue - 'cause who do you call first when something bad happens? (It is not the Ghostbusters.) There's a sentiment out there - "The hell with the cops!"

As if Philadelphia's famed parking wars were short on costly aggravation, New York City's enforcers have lumbered into the fray with their hands out. In a move that eliminates an unwritten, if illegal, perk of driving into the Big Apple from a Pennsylvania home, New York's Finance Department has ended a years-long practice of not going after Pennsylvanians for unpaid parking tickets. The news arrived last week with the thud of a thick envelope, heavy with dozens of copies of records, on the kitchen table of Noberto Vargas' apartment in North Philadelphia's Yorktown community.

Soon after moving to Brooklyn last year, 22-year-old Kari Ferrell told her new friends she was terminally ill. And then, she was pregnant. And then, her ATM card would work only at a few machines, so she'd exchange checks for money. Her friends, dates, and even casual acquaintances spotted her cash, paid for cabs, and picked up the check at restaurants and bars. Until they found out that law-enforcement officials don't believe any of the yarns spun by the woman whom bloggers have dubbed the "hipster grifter.

It was a steamy summer night in 1996 when Anthony Shroeder left his screen door open for air as he watched television in his Olney rowhouse. A band of gang members showed up on the other side at 3 a.m. They ordered the 75-year-old Shroeder to drop to the floor. Instead, he leveled his .25-caliber handgun and tried to fire. Police say one of the gang - David "Solid" Nam - was quicker. He fatally shot Shroeder in the chest with a .22-caliber rifle. Three teens from the neighborhood were charged.

JUSTICE is sometimes elusive, if not fickle. For a few, it comes quickly and conclusively, like Michael Vick. Others have to wait a while, like the Duke lacrosse players. For some, it never seems to come, like Danny Faulkner. Or O.J. And sometimes, just when you've stopped believing in it, justice makes an unexpected comeback. And your realize then why they say hope is the last thing to die. Look at Edgar Ray Killen. Two years ago, exactly 41 years to the day he orchestrated the murders of three civil-rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss.

The political landscape in Venezuela remains terribly volatile, and that could impact the Phillies in their search for the next Bobby Abreu or Freddy Garcia. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is a close ally to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and a vocal foe of the United States. Chavez's parliament, made up of his supporters, last month authorized him to rule by decree for 18 months. He has nationalized the telecommunications and electric industries and intends to nationalize the oil industry in a push toward Cuban socialism.

Shantel West thought she got off easy when it cost $80 to repair her 2004 Pontiac Grand Prix after a fender-bender in Radnor Township last spring - until she got a $715.08 bill for the three police officers who responded to her 911 call. The Radnor officers advised West not to report the accident to her auto insurer, since only the car's side mirror had been damaged. What they did not mention was that they would report the crash to Cost Recovery Corp., a Dayton, Ohio, firm that helps municipalities recoup the cost of police and fire department services.

COULD THE long arm of city law reach into Thomas Jefferson University and save Eakin's "The Gross Clinic" from being sold? We don't know if Mayor Street's suggestion to designate the painting "an historic object" will actually work, but it's a genius idea: At the very least, it may result in a long legal battle that buys time to find another solution to the sale. That, anyway, was the fate of the last cultural treasure that the city designated as historic: The Maxfield Parrish/Louis Tiffany mural "Dream Garden.

THE ARREST of Charles Taylor, whose hands are stained with the blood of 400,000 people, most of them women and children, focuses renewed interest on how and why the world community brings despots to justice. For 14 years the rebel and former president of Liberia led a ruthless regime, whose young and often doped-up soldiers, wearing wigs and masks, sliced off the arms and legs of their victims, gang raped them, forced them into sexual slavery, cut out their hearts, and ate them.