The post-midnight, mid-November sky was a deep, clear, cobalt blue, a few white, translucent clouds scudding vertically toward the fully risen moon.

The breeze was cold and crisp, pushing fallen leaves before it to scrape raspingly along the concrete sidewalks and flutter with a rustle in the gutters.

A squad of Baltimore City cops, three in white cruisers and one in a black cruiser, patrol past me often, sometimes flying by with lights blinking but no siren, to disappear up a side street.

The bus stop gives a 200 yard view uphill to the ridge where the 7-11 sits, which serves as the police base of operations. This 7-11 is robbed at gunpoint regularly and sits next to a recently looted vacant business.

Downhill, visibility extends a quart mile into the deeper city.

Civilian vehicle traffic is almost absent.

Four parties emerge, disappear and reemerge on foot, from various alleys, side streets and lots over the course of the hour.

A lone thug, with braids, flexing his arms, hands in pockets, his head on a swivel, patrols the area, staying clear of the viewer at the bus stop before the deserted dialysis clinic.

A pair of older teens skulk about, checking doors, looking for cops, circling the bus stop warily as if I, its lone occupant, am tainted bait.

A small, barely-shaped woman in her early twenties walks the street, three feet from the gutter, the two fingers of her left hand wagging for a ride. Three different motorists pull over to give her a lift, only to circle back around in 10-15 minutes to drop her off barely a block from her pickup spot. The automobiles are new and stylish, one an Audi, another a Saab, the drivers unseen as they drive into the city from the suburban north.

The cops play cat and mouse with these people, never stopping them, but driving buy as the hoodrats duck into doorways and back into alleys.

After a half hour the police lose interest in my worn old form, no longer even bothering to slow down to identify me.

Eventually the last car—the command car it seems—roars down the street, leaving the 7-11 unprotected.

Immediately after the car passes, three younger teens emerge from the ruined storefront of a vacant business, lumber and brick scattered on the concrete sidewalk above the asphalt street. Two are short, one is tall. The tall one wears last year's grandma Cristmas sweater—too small for him—stretching the sleeves over his hands as the temperature drops. The smaller of the short ones wears a hooded sweatshirt. The larger short one has a leather jacket draped over his head, both his hands halfway in the sleeves.

The trio walk up the street toward me so I step back and put hand to knife hilt under my bomber jacket. The thin boy in the lead nods to me and says, "Good morning, sir," as they all three slink warily by.

Once past me they cross the street to the recently looted vacant business and pick up foot speed on their way to the 7-11, trotting like two-legged dogs. As they cross the side street to the 7-11 the black police cruiser roars out of another side street, stops in the middle of the primary street in front of the 7-11 and puts on his lights as the three shadows slink off back into the neighborhood. As they disappear a second police cruiser arrives on the scene.

As a witness I feel like an observant ghost, more like a moderator in some war game than an actual component of the activity.