#Tangled up in blue how to

#Tangled up in blue how to

Throughout the evening, the older partner provided the younger one with street survival tips-coaching him about how to approach a parked car, without getting shot or runover by the driver or intervene in a domestic dispute, without one or both combatants turning on the first responders.ДЄs if to illustrate the difficulty of applying this advice-and the challenges of the job itself-our first 911 call, from a battered wife, turned ugly for all involved, pretty quickly.I came away from my вЂњride alongвЂќ that night and others, with much greater appreciation for what cops, good or bad, dealt with on a daily basis, just a few blocks away from my own DC neighborhood, where open drug peddling, robberies, sexual assault, and gun fire were all too common back then. The neighborhood, still many decades away from gentrification, had been invaded by drug dealers. Our route included DCвЂ™s вЂњU-Street corridor,вЂќ still looking bleak, burned-out, and rubble strewn four years after rioting over Martin Luther KingвЂ™s assassination. An older African-American officer was breaking in a much younger white cop, recently arrived from the police academy. My first night out, riding in the back of a patrol car, just a few years later, left a lasting and different impression of police work. The resulting rough ride was both claustrophobic and nearly suffocating, due to everyoneвЂ™s CS-saturated clothes.

One of my arresting officers took obvious pleasure in packing the patrol wagon that hauled us away with as many people as possible. During the 1971 Mayday protests, I was among 12,000 people unlawfully detained by DC cops-after being tear-gassed again. Later that same year, along with hundreds of others paying a call on the South Vietnamese embassy, I was blasted with CS gas and chased down Wisconsin Avenue. In 1969, I was nearly trampled by a mounted police officer at President Richard NixonвЂ™s inauguration. My pre-law school interaction with the MPD, during protests against the Vietnam War, had not been friendly. Then, as now, вЂњride alongвЂќ allows local residents to accompany police officers, out on patrol, in order to get a first-hand view of what police work entails. law school in the early 1970s, everyone enrolled in its criminal law class was required to participate in the Metropolitan Police DepartmentвЂ™s вЂњride alongвЂќ program.