The bow-tied pundit drops into South L.A. for a ride-along with LAPD Sgt. Sean Colomey. Hard to tell if they ever got out of the car; the column is in the Tribune-owned Hartford Courant (LAT registration gets you in). Excerpts:

"I love it," says Colomey of his job as he inserts his Crown Victoria into traffic on a mild, sunny, eventful afternoon patrolling the swath of South Los Angeles where most flat surfaces are marked with the spray-painted signs of the 60 or so gangs that deal drugs to customers and death to each other. Deciphering those signs - they change constantly, a public kaleidoscope of pervasive menace - is one of Colomey's instincts, honed over 14 years in this police division. The signs assert territorial sovereignty. When one gang paints its sign over another's, an experienced officer knows violence is coming...

The job in this police division includes patrolling five housing projects, one of them the largest west of the Mississippi. Each is an incubator of crime. In one, Colomey sees a drug dealer known as Ant talking on his Nextel. Nearby, Colomey spots video cameras the size of cigarette packs, tucked under the eaves of ramshackle houses to give occupants early warning of the approach of police or rival drug dealers...

So, what is there for Colomey to love about his job? There is the company of his colleagues and the satisfaction of being a brick in a thin blue seawall against a rising tide of chaos. His fellow officers' minute-by-minute judgments, based on years of grim experiences, make life a little less hazardous for the many good people struggling to give their children escape velocity from the tightening gyre of gang membership, violence, drugs, incarceration and death.