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No one can say the Metropolitan Police Department isn’t aware of the District’s car-theft plague. On Aug. 1, Ronald Monroe, assistant chief for the department’s northern Regional Operations Command, was stymied in his morning commute: His department-issued Crown Vic wasn’t where he had parked it the night before. “When I came out of my house,” Monroe says, “what to my wondering eyes did appear?…I could not see my sleigh or eight tiny reindeer.” Police found the cruiser that morning a few blocks away, on Marietta Place NW. The door lock had been jimmied and the ignition popped, and a cell phone and inboard radio were missing, but otherwise it was in good shape. Police have no suspects, Monroe says. “There’s nothing I’d like more than to catch the guy who did it,” he says. “It’s a great inconvenience when they steal your car….It just sticks in your craw.” John Metcalfe