Keys and Shields

So there's a crimewave in Brooklyn right now. No big surprise. You add an over 50 percent unemployment for brothers, a recession, and gentrification that's jamming more and more poor folks into smaller places, and that's when the guns come out. As a result the police presence around the way has created the kind of hood where I feel like I'm seeing more cops than people when I go to get bread from the market. And in the darker hours, the place the boys in blue have chosen to congregate is the Subway sandwich shop on Nostrand.

As my uncle was a cop for more than half of my life I've never had an outright hatred for the police. Hell they came to my rescue with all but a SWAT Team when my crib got broken into and treated me with the utmost respect for most of my youth (mainly because I didn't do a spec of dirt back then). But that DC, where I can barely recall more than one or two brutality cases ever making the front pages. Here in New York, dirty and racist cops seem to be as plentiful as the rats and roaches that run the city. The last time I called the NYPD was when I thought my car had been stolen back when I lived in Crown Heights. They came in the crib looking around like they were waiting to find crack boiling on the stove and an arsenal of pistols in the freezers. It turned out my ride had been impounded for unpaid tickets and I had to go all the way out to still-thugged out Red Hook to get it.

But as I rolled into Subway for a sandwich way after I should have been eating, I found myself in a quick convo with some young 50 who were greener than the eco-friendly, all in their early 20s, all on the job because it was the only way they were going to make decent enough dough to support their families. And though the convo was only a few minutes long and our main point of discussion was the weather, I came to the conclusion that just like it's not all of us, it ain't all of them. And while I'm a relatively neutral party in the game of cops and robbers, it was even cool to put down my white flag and just be for a minute. My friend behind the counter, who informed me that the shop had been robbed just a few weeks before, explained that she didn't care if folks around the way talked bad about her because her place had become a cop hangout. "They make me feel safe," she said. Protecting and Serving. Ain't that what they're supposed to do? Sometimes they do get it right. Out.