I have been in and out of the house on this bucolic spring day listening to my black neighbors talking about “the roaches [criminals] coming out.”

Every half hour there is a police car roaring around Hamilton with its siren blaring—there goes one right now, at 4.57, up White venue, making my window frames shake. For the past six months I have rarely seen a police cruiser that has not had its lights on thundering somewhere in a hurry. Part of this—most of it, I think—is that fact that cops do not have the community support, or even the ideal of it, to answer calls one or two at a time. Every asshole that needs cuffed now tales five cops, a t least, due to the threat of legal action on behalf of the Oppressed Brethren of Martyr Gray.

An hour and a half ago, right after I glared at the Nods—a local family of heroin addicts—I saw an ambulance, a pumper truck and a cruiser flying off to the north. Cops no longer do anything alone but converge in packs of screaming cruisers, so I was surprised to see another cop car lazily make the turn in the wrong direction, not the least bit concerned about where his colleagues were off to and why. This car turns off of Hamilton onto Harford in the southbound lane within three paces of where I stood counting my money on the curb in front of Hamilton Liquors.

Something did not add up:

There were two pigs in this cruiser, both black, and they seemed to have full tactical gear on minus the helmet. The passenger was slouching like some gangster and talking into his radio as if to a girlfriend or homeboy, not police business. An air of lazy unprofessional contempt hung upon the two uniformed men as they smiled and cruised.

The car was a blue and white but was kind of big and old for a BPD cruiser.

There was a sheriff’s emblem around police, with the municipality markings removed.

The cops had no BPD insignia that I could see and seemed to have a slightly darker shade of blue uniform than the norm.

Who were these faɡɡots?

Why are they here?

Why did a regular BPD cruiser speed by them with its lights on and not stop and pull into reverse and ask these jokers what the hell they were doing in Baltimore City?

Where did these faɡɡots come from?