Lights and Sirens
Part 44 of A Policeman's Tale of the American Riviera
“There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the seventh cavalry.”
~George Armstrong Custer
A Good Scythe
Hubris, of course, is often born from ignorance, and gang members are nothing if they aren’t ignorant. When you sit in the box with a gang member, say an Eastside Krazy, or a Travieso, or some budding young scholar from Westside Projects, you are sharing space with one of the most ignorant and simultaneously arrogant creatures on earth—something like a cobra sitting in the bottom of a wicker basket. There is a willfulness about them, a stubborn and even haughty certainty that they know more than you do. They think they know the law, for one, and will insist on rights not granted to them under any constitution on earth. They will push right up against the limits of your patience because they insist on a particularly aggravating brand of edgy falso orgullo. They will challenge you to take off your shield and fight, they will threaten your wife and your family, they will promise to burn down your house, and only a fool would fail to take them seriously. They are certain they know everything there is to know about policy and procedure, about case law, and they are utterly convinced they are smarter than you are. But if you ask them who Abraham Lincoln was, or to point out Kansas on a map—and just to amuse yourself, you did that frequently—all you will get for your troubles are gangster sneers and cocky smiles and a fuck you, puerco, thrown in for good measure.
The younger homeys, some as young as 14, are stupid the way a young rattlesnake is stupid, and that is especially true in Santa Barbara, where the gangland rules are lax and the discipline among gangsters is falling apart because many of the big homeys—whose job it is to make the rules and to enforce them—are in prison. The youngsters are full of venom but don’t know how to use it yet. They strike in every direction and usually for the same reason, which is the thing they least like to admit: fear.
