Blog #1: Da Hood

“...’cause everyone in LA got a little bit of Thug in him...” -Tupak Shakur

What LA native hasn’t been robbed once or twice in his or her life? It’s a frightening experience which would make the average kid tremble and tear up with fear...but this ain’t no average city...and I ain’t no “average kid.”

No...no trembling here.  No tears.  My body goes into it’s ghetto survival mode.  That’s IF my preventative techniques and skills, acquired from living in the heart of MS-13 territory in it’s prime, didn’t do the trick.

“Where you from, puto?”

Being that my attire resembled a Grungy-Cobain existence and that I had played a fun game of 3-Flys-Up with this neighborhood acquaintance just the other day, I knew he wasn’t really interested in what gang I represented.   Now he rolled four-deep, and wasn’t interested in catching fly balls either.  I was “caught slippin”.  I transform into a hypnotic trance, giving up my bright red Swatch Watch (with big moving yellow digits) & the 50-cents I was going to use for a pack of Garbage Pail Kids and a paleta from the OG Yellow Ice Cream Truck on San Marino St.  As I surrendered my belongings to this skinny 26-waist sized MS-er rocking a size 44-waist pair of perfectly creased tan Dickie pants, maybe 2 years my elder (a lifetime in teenage-years), all I could think about was what excuse I could give my mother for not having my watch!  No way was I going to tell her about what actually transpired...are you kidding me?  She would have went looking for him! And I definitely cannot have that.  My adolescent street cred would have been tarnished!  This is youth-survival 101 in Da Hood.

I share this snippet of my life in Da Hood in hopes of relating to YOU: My soon-to-be blog followers.  If you ever crossed the street to avoid a thug on your way to school...if you ever had to cement dive at the sound of gunshots and screeching tires... if you ever lost sleep because of the ghetto bird circling your block... if you ever had to literally run for you life, then laughed about it with your friends and continued the conversation you were just having about baseball cards without skipping a beat....then the series of blogs that will follow is for you.

Being raised by a single mother in Da Hood was no walk in the park.  The potential for me becoming a product of my environment was enormous.  The odds of surviving and becoming successful were completely against me.  Luckily for me, the wrath of my mother’s death-glare and the sting of her heavy handed discipline far outweighed anything a common street thug could dish out.

Years of witnessing and experiencing ignorant violence has given me a sense of duty to protect the innocent from evil.  I never earned a sewing patch in the Boyscouts, so secretly tailoring a custom fit cape and mask was out of the question.  Result?  I joined the local police department and am now serving the same community in which I was born and raised.

Being a police officer has sparked many heated debates with my closest family and friends.  Topics such as ticket quotas, mandatory verbal warnings before using lethal force and arresting street vendors are only a few of the subjects I have debated about.  My inner conflictions with such issues have evolved throughout my seven years of being in this chosen profession.  With my blog I wish to humanize the badge through me: Chris.  A son, a brother, a friend, a cousin, an uncle, a God-father and a fellow survivor of Da Hood.

It is not my intention to recruit you into the police department.  Nor is it to convince you that all of your negative opinions about law enforcement are wrong.  I can’t compete with the morals, ethics and values which have been instilled in you throughout the years of living in Da Hood.   If I can dispel a rumor or two along the way and feed you a different perspective here and there, I’ll be a happy camper.

So read on with an open mind, that is my challenge to you.  Until my next blog, dawg.....

PIECE LOVE & WHISKEY