Crime Doesn't Play

LAS VEGAS: In Sin City, prostitution and gambling are legal. But nine-year-old Jeremy Anderson is finding that other taboos are quite vigorously enforced. Last November, Jeremy and some friends were walking home from school when a rather Rockwellian construction worker asked if the children wanted to write their names in a just-poured cement sidewalk. "The man said I could, so I did," said Jeremy. He and his friends then wrote their names and made hand- and footprints. A few weeks later, the job's contractor contacted Jeremy's mother and told her she owed $11,000 because the company would have to redo the sidewalk. She refused, and forgot about the incident. But on January 28, little Jeremy didn't come home from school. He had been charged by police with a felony, malicious destruction of property valued at more than $5,000, and taken for booking at Juvenile Hall, where he was stripped down to his underwear and searched. Jeremy will be taking the rap alone; the other children were all younger than 8 and thus weren't charged in accordance with Nevada law. Mr. Rockwell could not be reached for comment.