But, since your election, the crime rate has skyrocketed. This year, homicides are up 57 percent, a murder rate worse than Washington, D.C.'s, and Prince George's is averaging one homicide every other day. Also, rapes are up 25 percent and robberies are up 100 percent. And, when it comes to car thefts and carjackings, Prince George's County leads the nation. On average, 50 cars a day are stolen in PG County and there were more PG car thefts last year (18,485) than in all of Maryland's other 23 subdivisions combined (17,382). In fact, more cars were stolen in Prince George's last year than in 33 states!

Likewise, PG is a national leader in carjackings (forcible personal car theft) with more last year (563) than the rest of Maryland (492). And PG carjackings are already up 40 percent in the first five months of 2005. To make matters worse, the crime rate is down in many of Maryland's other areas. Last year's crime rate in suburban Baltimore County reached a 30-year low.

With frightened residents demanding action, and with re-election right around the corner, what should you do?

Here are your options:

1. Blame your police chief and fire him for letting crime spike so dramatically.

2. Hire more police officers even if it means calling for higher taxes by repealing PG's TRIM property tax cap.

3. Blame the owners of 22 high-crime area apartment buildings. Hold a press conference and threaten to condemn and bulldoze the buildings if necessary.

If you selected Option 3, then you're thinking like Jack Johnson, the incumbent county executive. Option No. 1 doesn't work because you recently hired the police chief, Melvin High, with great fanfare and assurances that he could do the job. Firing Chief High would reflect on your judgment and, besides, Chief High is an African American succeeding a long line of white police chiefs.

Option No. 2 doesn't work because county voters, both black and white, have repeatedly and adamantly refused to repeal TRIM, the "third rail" of PG politics. With real estate assessments going through the roof, who wants to run for re-election calling for higher property taxes?

But Option 3 is a winner. Nobody likes apartment building owners who are mostly whites and live outside the county. Likewise, most county voters frown on apartment tenants who, typically, are low-income, transient and don't vote. So let's make the white-devil owners and their crime-prone tenants the scapegoats.

And that's exactly what County Executive Jack Johnson did last March at a high-profile press conference. While the TV cameras rolled, Johnson gave the apartment-owners hell. "Our demands are non-negotiable, and if they are not met, we will close you down. You would not allow your families to live in an environment like this ..."

It was high political theater -- Johnson blaming the owners for renting to drug dealers and for allowing their buildings to become "breeding grounds for crime." And it might have worked except Jack Johnson made one big mistake -- he picked on the wrong guy, David Hillman.

Hillman, the son of a grocer, was an accountant back in the 1960s when one of his clients offered to sell him a mismanaged apartment building. Hillman, who knew nothing about real estate, took the offer and began building a real estate company, Southern Management, that today owns 70 apartment buildings (23,000 units including 890 units in Prince George's), employs 1,200 people and is worth more than $2 billion.

Like most developers, Hillman is accustomed to being blamed for traffic congestion and for crowded classrooms (how come no one blames car dealers for traffic congestion and maternity wards for crowded classrooms?). And he's used to special developer taxes and to special political campaign rules aimed only at developers. And he's used to hypocritical politicians publicly condemning developers and, then, privately begging for money. But he's never been called a crime lord before.

So David Hillman let Jack Johnson have his big media day and then Hillman slapped a $6 million lawsuit on him. In the suit, Hillman points out that, by law, the county is responsible for controlling crime, not apartment owners.

Furthermore, in 1998, the apartment owners agreed to a special $25 per apartment unit bi-annual tax to hire more county cops who would patrol the high-crime areas. The county officials took the money but never hired the cops. Instead, the police force remains under-manned (PG has 1,350 officers while D.C. has 3,800) and police response times can be measured in hours. So Hillman is suing Johnson for breaching that agreement, for publicly stigmatizing his buildings and for damaging his rental business.

In response, Jack Johnson has changed his tune. Instead of bulldozing Hillman's apartments, he's offering money to help clean them up. And now he's blaming the county's crime wave on the District of Columbia. Apparently Jack Johnson has learned that it's easier to pick on D.C. than to chump David Hillman.

Blair Lee is president of the Lee Development Group in Silver Spring.