by Hal Erickson
synopsis
Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) are under pressure from practically everyone in Los Angeles-- their superiors at the Police Department on down to a humble restaurant counterman--to find out who has pulled off seventeen burglaries in the past five weeks. Only after a lengthy and sometimes tedious stake-out are the detectives able to nail a likely suspect: a furtive-looking gent carrying an ominously bulky bag of groceries. This oft-seen Dragnet TV episode (which, having slipped into public domain, is available on a number of VHS and DVD collections) was adapted from a radio broadcast first heard on September 8, 1953.
