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At the address, an older woman came out to greet the officer and said it was some kind of mistake, no one there had called the police. Within seconds, the daughter came out and assured her mother that she had, then the two of them fought for a little while over the necessity of summoning law enforcement while the calm and stoic Old West sheriff waited. Finally they concluded that it would be OK if the officer at least spoke to the young man who just minutes earlier had threatened both of them with a knife. The officer disappeared inside and came out five minutes later, his handcuffs still on his belt. The kid was calm; he had yelled at them earlier, but there wasn't an actual knife involved. This became a common theme throughout the rest of the night -- a domestic disturbance where no one is actually interested in pressing charges. They would use the police as a threat to a family member, a weapon they kept in their arsenal to gain leverage during a bad argument. That also meant that occasionally they had to prove it wasn't a bluff, but in just about every circumstance, no one actually wanted law enforcement there, at least in this neighborhood.

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Toward the end of the shift, we drove up to a lookout point and kicked out a bunch of kids for being parked there after dark. Then we parked there and looked out over the city. He let me track jackrabbits with the spotlight while he told me horror stories about his own altercations with law enforcement as a teenager. I told him the story about being tackled by the LAPD, but it paled in comparison to the time he got punched in the stomach by a cop while he was handcuffed.

"It's the same as you'd find at any job," he said. "There are some good officers and some bad ones. They're just people." We stared at the lights for awhile and watched cars approach the lookout, then quickly U-turn and leave. "Except RoboCop," he added.

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Let he who is blameless cast the first .50 AE round.

I got to run the lights and the siren on the way back to the station, but for the most part we didn't talk. Instead we reflected on how the whole shift had been a whirlwind of steely nerve, heroics, and fast food. Even though we made a great team, he never found the right moment to ask if I wanted to be his partner for good. He didn't have to. I picked up on all the clues, because I was born for this.

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