deep budget cuts have made even the most basic municipal tasks like john crutch's code enforcement incredibly difficult. hey, lynn, is this dispatch? hey, this is john over in code enforcement. i was wondering if i could get a police officer to meet me at a vacant house. >> who are you calling right then? >> police dispatch. >> okay. >> my contact, who was supposed to be tagging along, he was just kind of driving around in the part of town we were going to go to, and then they just found three burglary suspects. it happens every time. >> wow. >> yeah, yeah. >> just another day in stockton? >> that's it. >> john's job boils down to stopping crimes before they start, boarding up vacant homes, and protecting neighborhoods against urban blight. but in a town with thousands of vacant housing units and only 12 enforcement officers, it's fair to say that the good guys are a little outnumbered.