Would You Want CSI / Law and Order / Bones / NCIS in Your Town?

Sure, at first thought it seems like a great idea. You could have an elite investigative unit located in your town. I mean, c'mon your local police investigators have to track down leads, interview dozens of people, send important evidence to a state lab 6 hours down the road and wait 4 - 6 months for the analysis to come back. Sometimes these guys take months, maybe even years, to solve cases. Compare that to Criminal Minds wherein the team drops into town and solves multiple murders in a matter of days. These elite teams have computer savants, people capable of solving crimes using math, and amazing labs in the basement (with neon lights). What could possibly be the downside?

Well, the worst part would have to be the skyrocketing homicide rate. Every week there would be someone killed (for at least the traditional 22 weeks of an American television series). Of course, every one of them would be solved quickly, but if you're in Lebanon, Virginia (population approximately 3,500) your homicide rate would be 629 deaths per 100,000. Comparatively, the highest homicide rate in the country has been New Orleans at 52 per 100,000.  Somehow, that doesn't strike me as sustainable.

Almost as bad would be the 175% tax rates which would be needed to pay for those amazing labs. After all, if you are going to have your very own lab, which is equipped with the most very newest of every kind of analytical equipment and enough staff so that every bit of evidence can be analyzed the same day it is found, it don't come cheap.

However, there is an option on the cheap: psych. Now, you'd still get the alarmingly high homicide rates, but all the expensive stuff (lab, staff, etc.) just isn't there. Of course, you have to put with an immature whacko bouncing around claiming he was psychic, but who cares since he would be solving every crime in sight at an affordable rate. And he'd be funner to be around than the knock-off over at CBS (BTW, does anybody watch that show?).