Please forgive no posts yesterday -- I took the day off to rest up after a virtually non-stop week of helping out our British crime reporter from The Independent. I see there's quite a bit of catching up to do ...

In another blog, I'll talk about new developments in the Annie McCann case, and of course the DC sniper is set to be executed tonight, the mayor's trial continues, the police dog Blade, shot in a case of friendly fire, is well on his way to recovery, prosecutors dropped charges in an alleged brothel in Patterson Park and two more people were killed.

First off, Mark Hughes seemed to enjoy himself though he left with no interview with either the city's police commissioner or the mayor. In fact, we tried to catch Sheila Dixon on Saturday at a tree planting ceremony in North Baltimore but she declined to speak. "I'm planting trees today," she said to a spokesman, but in earshot of both Mark and I. There's much more on their Tale of Two Cities blog.

Too bad. For all the city does to counter the image of Baltimore as The Wire, the silence of the two leaders on the topic of crime left him the impression they've got their heads in the sand. And coupled with the crime he did see -- a murder while out with union cops and a shooting just moments after he arrived at the train station -- our leaders didn't do much to dispel the notion of a dangerous city to our friends overseas.

We followed the mayor as she bicycled around a neighborhood delivering trees; she could've saddled up to Mark and used the moment to talk about her initiatives and how she thinks they helped bring crime down. We were in a park that had a murder a year ago; she could've used that to explain how planting trees gets the community energized and is indeed a part of combating violence. We were on the street where a community activist lived whose house was firebombed several years ago by angry drug dealers. She could've used the tree moment to again talk about reclaiming the streets.

Instead, mark went home feeling snubbed and our image of crime and our inability to deal with it only reinforced.

On the other side of the pond, our very own Justin Fenson found that cops in London don't report breaking crime, usually until an arrest is made. He quoted one spokesman saying that reporting, say a body that was found near where Justin is staying, would only incite the public into thinking crime was worse than it really was. I can't imagine that line going over too well here! Justin had some quiet nides riding with cops, but I was more heartened by some of the comments from people who wanted to make sure he got to the really bad parts of town.