Our sergeant stood at the front of our small briefing room behind a table, conducting the usual line-up meeting that began all of our shifts. He said,“As we discussed last night, we’ll rendezvous at Main Street and 200 South at sixteen-hundred hours. I want the riff-raff cleared before the evening rush.There’s also a concert at the Gallivan Center tonight, so let’s make sure that gets extra attention. There were a lot of complaints from people about aggressive panhandlers and a couple of public urinations. What was that last event? Craft City or something? Well, you know the drill.”

I glanced at the clock and was about to stand and head out for my shift, but our sergeant held up a hand and said, “One more thing.” For a moment, he squinted and studied something above our heads. He then resumed, saying,“Our citation numbers are decent, but a bit behind the other shifts, so let’s see if we can get our numbers up. Two challenges. The first one of you to ticket someone selling items without a license gets two hours off.”

I raised my eyebrows and perked up on my seat. It would be wonderful to surprise my family by getting off work early and spending an evening with them. As a newer officer, I didn’t have a lot of vacation saved up. Our sergeant held up two fingers. “The second challenge for today will be the first person to pull over and ticket a blue Ford or a yellow Toyota. That will also earn you two hours.”

The officer to my right sighed. I glanced over just in time to see him finish rolling his eyes. He was a veteran officer and, like most senior officers, these little incentive games annoyed him. Well, I thought, that’s good. If he’s too jaded to want to play, I’ll have a better chance at winning the time off. Our sergeant dismissed us and we headed out on patrol.

Less than an hour later, I was driving along State Street, turned a corner, and there it was: jackpot. I parked and leapt out of my car. With a variety of businesses along the street, this stretch of sidewalk hosted a good amount of pedestrian traffic, the perfect place if you wanted to sell something to passersby. I smirked.

The Hispanic kid was probably thirteen years old. He wore a blue shirt with white stripes and a collar, khakis, and shiny black shoes. He stood beside a metal cooler with a handle and wheels, a cardboard sign propped against it, listing the prices for each item.

This was it. No one had called over the radio that they’d stopped a unlicensed vendor. No way this kid had a license. This was my two hours off. “Corns!” the kid yelled, with a hint of an accent. “Corns! Sweet corns! Da best horchata! Cold horchata!” A woman purchased a corn on a stick for each of her three children. I waited for her to pay then leave. “Corns!” the kid yelled. “Horcha…” The kid noticed me approaching. He flinched and his teeth snapped shut. He hunched and his body seemed to shrink while his clothes remained the same size.

I stopped and frowned down at his cooler. There didn’t appear to be much ice. Wouldn’t the horchata spoil in this heat without ice? It didn’t take a food health inspector to know someone could get sick if those drinks soured. Looked a bit dirty inside, too. What appeared to be mayo and sugar, or perhaps salt, slathered the corn. Some kind of white sauce. Gross, I thought. Mayonnaise? On a hot day?

The kid managed a wobbly smile and said, “Sir? You like something?” I stared at the kid for a moment, then said, “You know it’s illegal to sell food like this without a license, right?” The kid blinked at me. “Do you have a vendor’s license?” He looked to his right, then at his cooler, then back at me. “You don’t want a corn?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, kid. This is illegal. You can’t sell this stuff here.” He shifted his weight and shrugged. “We need to get your parents down here.” I dialed the number he gave me and asked his parents to come to our location. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I have to give you a ticket, and you’ll have to take all his home.” “Ticket?” the kid said, looking up, but not quite making eye contact.“Yes.” I took out my ticket book and pen and scribbled.

“Let’s clean this up,” I said. “I go home.” He looked at me. “We need to wait for your parents to get here.” His parents arrived and I gave the paperwork to them. They packed up his belongings and left. I thought: He’ll be okay. This will be a good lesson on how to do things the right way, doing my best to justify this in my mind. I watched them drive off, then rushed to my patrol car and shot a message to my sergeant. A few minutes later, my sergeant replied: “Congrats, Moutsos. You won. You got the time off. Nice work.” I grinned and started planning how I’d surprise my family and what we’d do together.

I nodded at the other bike squad officers gathered on Main Street. We chatted amongst ourselves for a few minutes before our sergeant showed up in his car. He parked, sauntered over, and began giving out assignments. “Moutsos, Ruiz, Bradshaw, you’re with me. Let’s get to work.”

The three of us followed our sergeant, who approached two men sitting on a bench beneath the shade of mature trees. The men appeared to be in their forties, both with scraggly beards. They wore dirty shirts and grimy jeans, one with sandals, one with shoes that might have been white in a previous life. The homeless often migrated from the homeless shelter to enjoy the cooler, shaded air between the towering buildings along this stretch of road. I’d seen them here often enough, and it always struck me how differently they acted.

Away from the crowded, often hostile atmosphere of the shelter, they were relaxed, smiled and laughed more. I couldn’t blame them for choosing this area. I’d want to get away from the shelter, too. The problem was that many of them begged for money, urinated in public, or worse, and otherwise irritated surrounding business owners, their employees, and customers. So this particular afternoon, we’d come down and warn them against misbehaving. We’d encourage them to hang out closer to the homeless shelter where they could use the bathroom there, rather than in an alley or pestering a business to use their facilities.

The two men noticed our approach and their conversation ceased. They exchanged a look and their shoulders sagged. “Gentlemen,” my sergeant said, nodding to them. “We know, we know,” the man on the left said, and they stood, retrieved their belongings, and headed down the sidewalk. I found a gap-toothed lady snoring on a blanket at the mouth of an alley, one of her legs jutting out onto the sidewalk, waiting for the unwary to trip over her. She cuddled a beer can like a child would a teddy bear. I noticed she wore three shirts. I always found it baffling how some homeless would wear layers of clothing in heat like this. Sure, they didn’t have a home with a closet or dresser, but that had to be uncomfortable.

I nudged the woman with my foot. She snorted and smacked her lips. I nudged her more vigorously. She blinked, red-rimmed brown eyes slightly unfocused and disoriented.“Huh-what? What? Whaaat?!” She spoke in a too loud, strident voice that made my teeth ache. “Ma’am,” I said. “I’m sorry, but you can’t sleep here.” “Oh. Cops.” She sat up. “Okay. Right. Whatever. Okay.” I heard two men arguing nearby. I turned back to the lady and said, “Pack up and move on, please.”

I didn’t wait for her response. I hurried in the direction of the argument. My sergeant stood in front of a man who sat on a bench built into a raised planter box full of struggling shrubs. The middle-aged man reminded me of Bill Murray, but with a broken nose and chubbier by about twenty pounds. “I don’t have to leave,” the chubby Bill Murray said. “This is a public place.” “You need to leave,” my sergeant said. “Now.” “I done nothing wrong.”

My sergeant pointed to the man’s backpack in the planter box behind him. “That. Right there.” My sergeant turned to me and gestured at the backpack.“Moutsos, I want you to write this guy up for destroying city plants.” I stiffened, blinked, and said, “City plants?” “Yeah,” my sergeant said, and rounded on the man. “It’s illegal to harm city plants.” “What?” the chubby Bill Murray said. “You gotta be kidding.”

My sergeant was not kidding. I remembered seeing that code. How could I forget such an odd law, thinking at the time that maybe somebody had cutdown a city tree or something, and then this law popped up in response. “How on Earth am I destroying city plants?” the man yelled. My sergeant pointed. “Your backpack is in a city planter box.” “Yeah? So?” “So plants grow in planter boxes. Your backpack is hurting those bushes.”

I got out my pen and wrote the chubby Bill Murray a ticket. The man huffed and complained. My sergeant folded his arms, glared, and said, “Next time, just do what we ask. Cooperation is always easier.” Chubby Bill Murray stormed off. I imagined he’d toss the ticket in the nearest garbage, if not chuck it in the street. I snorted with black humor. If he did, I could ticket him for littering. In a way, it was kind of nice to have so many laws. If someone was being a jerk, you could almost always find something to cite him for. So many laws, I thought. So little time.