I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly.

I got addicted. News, particularly daily news, is more addictive than crack cocaine, more addictive than heroin, more addictive than cigarettes.

Covering the civil-rights movement was a mind- and eye-opener for me. Houston was a segregated society, as was Texas as a whole - some of it by law, a lot of it by fear and tradition. But there was no violence where I lived, and if there was hate, it was either concealed from me or I just didn't recognize it.

I spoke to the police in Houston, and I spoke to the mayor's office in Houston.

Those numbers illustrate the size of the problem. Had they been able to devote more officers, police feel they could have easily written many times the number of tickets.

Since the case began, the Aurora Police Department has spent every possible resource on this investigation. We have literally spent hundreds of a hours on this case.