Over and over again, as Crowbar Cream crowded a responding officer, getting “into his face" almost nose-to-nose, the officer and his partner refused to take the poleese brutalitay bait. But then something snapped in the officer being threatened…

Threatened?

Yes, if I walked up to you and began snarling menacingly, within arm’s reach, daring you, “Watchyou gonna do muvafuca,” that is the crime of assault. If I then hit you, it would be assault and battery.

As one might imagine, the cop with the hoodrat in his face, finally did what you would have been excused for doing to me if I had menaced you, he beat him down. That officer has lost his job and the other responding officer is on probation.

This news comes “Just out da hood,” from T-Bone Hoost, who also reminded me that “Yeti season is already on,” with the murder of 27-year-old paleface Bryan McKinney on Woodlea Avenue, three blocks from where I tried to raise a family in the 1980s and 90s, on the very street where I was attacked twice by hoodrats in the late 1990s. There has also been two other murders in Northeast Baltimore, my former haunt, bringing the total to 178. The boys will be lucky to break 300 hits this year, but with messing with the poleese [who you are not yet aloud to kill] and sending strike teams into surrounding municipalities [most of these crimes remaining unreported] there is only so much a bruthahood can do—watchyou gonna do muvafuca!

An Omnibus Volume of James' First Two Books