The night was chilly, traffic light, few people on the street. If you don't have moxie, you don't take this job. They were a little reserved with a new reporter but friendly once they got used to me. They could have been on the PG force.
Cops are pretty much the same kinds of guys everywhere.
The problems are the same almost everywhere, the sociology, the texture of the neighborhoods. If you've been to the bad section of one city, you've pretty much been to all bad sections everywhere. Time and again we stopped gangbangers and similar folk, who wore the same garbage-baggish loose clothes that all bangers and most teenagers seem to like. LA, Denver, Chicago, Washington-same culture, same English, same guns, drugs, attitudes, same everything. There's not a lot of work for high school dropouts who can't read, and have a police record that would frighten a New York alley cat.