Now the two seem to be good friends.

"He runs a bingo game and I go say hello to all the elderly," Officer DeFrancesco says.

"Jimmy muscles them out of their bingo cards," Officer Branley jokes about his colleague. "East Cambridge is old school, everyone sticks together."

And the local priest is not the only person with whom the officers are friendly. Even in a city of over 100,000 residents, the officers give off a small-town type of familiarity and confidence. The only difference is that the crime here is not all small-town.

A call comes over the radio about an assault in a convenience store on Cambridge Street, and the suspect has fled.

We stop by the store, and ask the clerk what happened. He says he was pushed.

"I just want you to yell at him," the clerk says.

We speed off down Cambridge Street, in hot pursuit of our suspect, who turns out to be a smiling man pushing a child in a stroller. He claims that the clerk would not give his five-year old son his change, and denies pushing the clerk.

"You've seen me around. I'm not a bad guy," says the suspect. "You've gotta do your job. If he presses charges, I'll press charges for robbing my son."

Officer DeFrancesco gives the child in the stroller a high-five, and we head back to the station for me to meet my second assignment.

"You treat people how you want to be treated," Officer DeFrancesco says as he drives.

"You can't lose anything by treating them with respect," adds Officer Branley. "It doesn't cost you anything."

Walk-Along

As the sun sets and the city gets cooler, Officers Maureen B. Ford and Antonio Ayala begin their patrol of the Central Square area on foot.

"Walking is definitely much more communicative than being in a car," says Officer Ford, who has been policing for 12 years. "I used to work in the [local] high school so I know a lot of the kids."