It's a weekday afternoon. School has just let out. A familiar green Chevy prowls the Mission District and the two plainclothes cops inside spot a group of young men crossing the street a block and a half in front of them. They're at 22nd Street, to the east of Mission.
Officer Dion McDonnell starts calling out names to his partner as the car draws near. There are eight young men, who appear to be around 15 to 17 years old. The officers know all but two. Officer Henry Espinoza honks the horn, and one young man turns to look at them. He gives them a hard stare and then turns to catch up with his buddies.
The officers pull up in front of the group and get out of the car. They chat with the ones they know, asking about their probation and parole, chit-chat about the neighborhood. The youths don't say much. The officers tell them to keep moving.
All but the two the cops don't know.
The boys ask why they're being stopped.
"No big deal," Espinoza says. "We just want to talk."
They do a lot of talking, these two cops who work the gang detail in the Mission. They talk to the gang members about crimes in the area, their families, mutual acquaintances. Everything. Just keep them talking. Because if they're talking they're probably thinking and if they think about it long enough, they might realize that the gang life is no kind of life at all.
Read the rest of the article > The two cops who know all the gang members
obviously you didn't get the sarcasm
