How Watergate almost didn't happen

Sam Smith - The passing of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee has brought back memories of the 1972 break-in at the Watergate and, for me, a story I learned about how the incident almost didn't happen. The Washingtonian Magazine reported a few years ago:

 Across the street in the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge, a “spotter” for the burglars, Alfred C. Baldwin III, was glued to the TV watching a horror movie, Attack of the Puppet People, on Channel 20—oblivious to the situation developing across the street. Baldwin was holed up in a disheveled seventh-floor room with a window facing the Watergate. If squad car 80 had been in service and pulled up in front of the Watergate with lights flashing, siren wailing, and a uniformed police officer emerging from it, that surely would have pulled Baldwin’s attention away from the horror movie and likely given him time to notify the five burglars via walkie-talkie so they could have escaped and the illegal entry gone unnoticed.

But what the Washingtonian didn't report is why Squad Car 80 didn't show up. A high police department officer later told me that the morning of Watergate, the plain clothes officers  in the precinct had been lectured by their commander for not doing a decent job. They were warned if things didn't improve they would be back on uniformed patrol. At the moment that the Watergate call came in, the officers in Squad Car 80 were cooping (aka drinking coffee and eating donuts) in an alley and didn't respond.  The plain clothes officer filled the gap and changed history in the process.