A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away ( it seemed like),I graduated from the San Francisco Police Academy . My entire 40 person class got assigned to the Mission Police Station Field Training Program. At that time, my City had 10 Police Districts ( precincts) and the 3 busiest ones became training venues. Each of these Stations had different types of clientel.
Northern Station had several high profile entertainment areas, such as Union Street, and a fancy schmanshie mega bucks income residential area known as Pacific Heights ( where Da Mayor and a posse of CEO’s held court).
For balance, they had two low-income mega sized City Housing projects as well.
Central Station was basically China Town and the high-rise Financial District. Rounding out the work load were multiple ( Chinese immigrant focused ) Federal “Community Buildings”. Like all of the police Districts there were more than few Dive Bars that welcomed off-duty cops, only here they served decent Lo Mein and not cut-rate burgers at the bar.
Mission had just about anything and everything else you could imagine, with a largely South of Texas, gang-centric, lowest possible income focus. Most of the on- every-corner bottle shops accepted pesos gladly. Here, many dreary looking, multiple City-Block sized “Projects” seemed to fester everywhere.. The people with major money went up-hill into a bevy of gentrified Victorians or into the bare-chested, tight-tennis-shorted Gay mecca of the Castro District.
The name-sake Mission Street ran south to north of the District boundaries, and was a nationally known caldron of violence, drugs, and street corner warfare.
10 of us drew sequential short straws, and lucked into “ the best jobs in the City”
My uniformed Foot Patrol Beat was over 2 miles long, and about two blocks wide. After only 11 days on this 2PM -10 PM assignment, I knew all of the City Ambulance drivers, and local State Parole Officers, not only by their first names, but also by what kind of coffee they gulped down at Doughnut Heaven.
The northern-most part of my 3David42 call-sign assignment was generally populated by Career Drug Addicts.
Nod-off Heroin was the main currency here, with Columbian blow being too expensive, and skaggle-toothed meth-heads starting to pop up, running head-down in traffic lanes too frequently now after dark.
If you were a gal, and looked over 16, then you sold your body to strangers as many times a day as the spike in your arm called out for.
Guys had it simpler: deal death in its many street level forms, and violently take anything valuable from anybody, everybody, and each other. If that fails as it usually does in this Barrio,, then resume smashing, grabbing, and stealing at any store that had a fat cash register near an open door or breakable window.
Accordingly, there were 7 pawn shops in a tight cluster near the corner of 16th and Mish, while there were at least two store-front religious soul-saving operations per block on this main drag.
Alcoholics Anonymous and its competitive younger brother Narco Anon shared a heavily armored doorway ironically positioned between a Drug Store and a cut-rate liquor sales emporium.
The Ho Stroll was at 17th and Capp st, one dirty block east of the overwhelmed State Welfare and Food Stamp office on Juri Alley.
Real cop work, unlike the HollyWierd stuff that clogs up my cable TV, is mostly about people.
Having made a better than decent living as a bartender at a local Irish pub for several years prior, I had an honorary “Blarney Stone Gift of Gab” practice working for me.
I could, and did talk to anyone.
Watching “ The Girls” ply the oldest trade in the world from an un-authorized perch from a ratty flop house room over the classic corner dive bar “the Uptown” was a school lesson in itself.
TTG
