Word: cops
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Atkinson, widely regarded as the best cop in his squad, believes he is needed in this precinct. He hands out police-badge stickers to children and tells Karen chilling stories abut the conditions he finds them living in. His sense of frustration grows with each shift, but he is still young enough to think he can make a difference for thousands of residents who sweat the mortgage payments and fear for their kids' safety...
...drive away, he follows. He radios in that he is heading east on Thomas Road, planning to pull the car over. The Lincoln speeds up, and Atkinson goes to his lights and siren. His next radio transmission is one word--bailout; it quickens the pulse of every cop who hears it. Across the west side, squad cars bearing the raised-wing symbol of the mythic Phoenix change direction like birds in flight...
Police brutality in New York City. Racial profiling in New Jersey. Quick trigger fingers in Chicago, where two unarmed black motorists were killed by police in separate incidents on a single day earlier this month. Judging by the national headlines, it is a season of cops gone mad. The story in Phoenix is different, but it is part of the same drama--the constantly stressed marriage between mostly white police forces and the minorities they work with, who are at once disproportionately the victims of crime and its perpetrators. The great majority of hardworking, law-abiding minority residents need...
...shots. It started with illegal aliens, and then it was, 'Let's send all the Mexicans back.'" Some of his officers were jumpy too--ready to crack down on immigrants. "I told people that it's not whites or Hispanics who killed Marc," Davila says. "It's drug-dealing cop killers. The issue isn't ethnicity--it's crime and drugs." Losing Atkinson was bad enough. Davila was determined to lose nothing more...
...begin to understand the frustration police feel when the gang member says that shooting a cop wins you honor these days; that all his contemporaries do is fight and shoot and get high and steal; that he will never identify the kid who shot him because ratting is the lowest; that he burns names under an R.I.P. tattoo on his left arm when close friends die; that he doesn't expect to live to 25; that sometimes he dreams about going legit and getting a really good job. Like what? "I don't know," he says. "Like maybe a telemarketer...