A man in a Santa Claus mask is committing home invasions. Worried about his fitness, Tony volunteers to partner up with different officers on night patrol – and gets a surprise or three while learning night patrol isn't quite what he remembered from his years as a Brooklyn beat officer.

Tony discovers one of Rachel's colleagues, a popular and much-honoured teacher, is a child molester. Stan tries to catch a robber who left his hat at the scene. Tony scrambles to get ballet tickets in time for Rachel's birthday while also learning about the molester's own childhood abuse and trying to convince the parents of one of the molester's victims to let their daughter tell her story in court.

Tony receives anonymous, artistic death threats, seemingly from a convict he'd helped to convict. Stan tries to prosecute a deer poacher with failed results until protests outside the department building give Tony an idea. Rachel's special-needs class gives a poetry reading. Tony learns the hard way it wasn't the convict sending him the death threats.