We had four districts in the Southern precinct. SOBO, was the fourth district where they sent the old guys nearing retirement. Basically you break up bar fights—not the hard shit you get elsewhere in Baltimore. Before it was gentrified it was a pleasure to police, because the parents would help. If so-in-so is causing trouble on the street corner, the local adults could call his mother and his father would come out of the bar at her behest and drag his young ass home where he wasn’t an embarrassment.

Once the gentrification started you still had the local tough guys keeping out the black criminal element. Of course, now that is gone and you even have off duty cops getting stuck-up and shanked outside of restaurants. There was a downside to this. Once the local white boys began to fall prey to the whigger image it was not always pretty.

[James and Mitch discuss his run-ins with local packs of whiggers in the mid 1990s as he worked night crew off of Fort Avenue from summer ‘95.]

They had the “knockout the drunk game” they’d play, waylaying drunks coming out of the bar. But they didn’t do this outside of Cox’s Pub because that was a cop bar. They’d do it outside of Jonny Heartlove’s place on the other side of Fort Avenue where it makes that dog-leg. Once my partner and I were coming out of the Hilltop sub shop across from Cox’s when we hear this, “Fuck Five-O, we’ll kick your cop asses!”

Of course, there’s five of these young, fit dudes and two of us cops. My partner was a sergeant, had had a rough day, and he just looked at me, said “Fuck it.”

We set our pizzas down and put up our dukes. We were ready to go and these two guys came out behind us who were D.C. cops and they put up their dukes—now there’s only a five-on-four advantage and they hit the road, which is the way with all punks, if they can’t sneak you, they gang up, or, failing that, they head home to wherever punks hide when the men won’t put up with their shit.