Cambridge's crime rate is at a 37-year low, but the Cambridge Police Department isn't letting up.

On a recent Friday night, a Crimson reporter accompanied several CPD officers on their beats and discovered a world of motor vehicle accidents, 911 hang-ups, forced entries and bloody fights.

And that was a slow night.

Car 1

My first assignment is Car 1, a squad car which covers East Cambridge. Officers James A. DeFrancesco and Kevin F. Branley and I start the afternoon with a "code 86." (For an abridged version of the CPD Dictionary, please see sidebar.)

We pull up to a new stop sign on Charles Street, and settle down to what I assume will be a considerable wait. After all, who would go through a stop sign directly in front of a highly visible police car?

One minute later, a black Celica zooms by us through the intersection without even slowing down.

"Damn," says Officer Branley, as Officer DeFrancesco accelerates and turns on the siren. We catch the Celica in the next block, and before the officers approach the car, Officer Branley runs a routine license-plate check by the dispatcher back at the station to see if the car is stolen. It is not, and the driver is issued a warning.

"Now we give more warnings because [the sign] is new," Officer DeFrancesco says. "Later on we'll do enforcement. We're not out to get them."

Eight minutes later, we're back at our waiting spot, and in less than 60 seconds a blue Pontiac with four men in it drives by us and through the intersection. The car isn't stolen, but a check on the insurance reveals it has been revoked. The officers come back to the squad car to wait on a Social Security number check on the driver.

"That's a crew full of wise guys right there," says Officer Branley.

The car has to be towed due to the lack of insurance. Despite the fact that the passengers and driver are visibly upset, kicking a nearby fence and slamming the car with their fists, the officers handle the situation with professionalism. They even all shake hands before the four men head to a bar and we drive off.

"I've been involved in arrests with pretty much everyone in that car," Officer DeFrancesco says. "I treat them with respect and they treat me with respect. And sometimes someone with a past criminal arrest will come to the aid of an officer. Sometimes they can be your best informants."

We're now cruising down a sunny back street, and both officers are elaborating on proud family histories of policing.

Before long, the officers spot a local priest, and pull the cruiser over for a chat. When a house-fire backdraft blew Officer DeFrancesco off a porch last year, the father came to visit him in hospital.

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."

Officer Ayala, who has been policing for three years, holds a master's degree in criminal justice.

"Police work is becoming a lot more complex. Out of my class of 18, about 12 had B.A.s. Some like me have a master's degree," she says.

Officer Ford also holds a master's in criminal justice. According to Officer Ayala, many of the CPD officers hold such a degree because of legislation which encourages officers to continue their education by providing salary raises based on the degree received.

We begin our tour checking emissions stickers on the front of cars, and then do a Code 86 by the Central T-stop, where many local drug dealers are known to hang out.

While officers don't ignore smaller deals, they also prefer to catch dealers with larger amount of drugs in order to commit them for a longer amount of time.

"You don't let it slide, but you don't want drug dealers getting off for personal use," explains Officer Ford.

As it begins to get dark, alcoholics and homeless are beginning to collect around the benches by the T-stop.

"We spend so much of our time dealing with alcoholics," says Officer Ayala. "We have the right to take custody of people under the influence of alcohol or drugs if they pose a threat to themselves or others."

According to Officer Ayala, this right is covered by Charter 111B, and alcoholics are therefore often referred to as "111s."

We put them in a shelter," says Officer Ayala. "If there is no room at the shelter, we take them to the station where they sleep it off. They are released when they are sober."

Officer Ayala calls the wagon for an intoxicated man sitting on the pavement. According to Ayala, 111s often get violent and have to be put in the wagon involuntarily. This old man, however, seems docile and grateful.

"Thank you. You're a nice man," says the alcoholic as Officer Ayala sits him down to wait for the wagon.

Cambridge police squad cars are not generally used for arrest or transport as they are not equipped with partitions. Only in an emergency when the wagon is busy will a car bring someone to the station, and then an officer will also sit in the back.

On our way down Mass. Ave., we bump into Detective Frank Pasquarello, public information officer for the CPD. He is taking a group of local blind people out to dinner.

After a minor motor vehicle accident and a failed attempt to serve a restraining order, Officers Ford and Ayala radio in to request time for dinner. I am treated to an excellent plate of pasta at Il Panino, and regaled with some of the best stories of the evening, all unfortunately off the record.

R-Car

It's dark out now, and I'm grateful to be back in a car because it's getting cold out.

This time it's an R-Car (report car) with Officer Jacques E. "Rosie" Derosiers.

"In the R-Car we respond to non-prioritized calls like stolen bikes. We do reports, and we also respond to heavy calls as backup," explains Officer Derosiers, who is originally from Haiti.

"When I came to this country, the police were so kind. To me in Haiti, the police were the criminals. And now I patrol and that's what I want to do," says Officer Derosiers. "I wish I could do it in Haiti to show them how it's done."

As a follow-up on my dinner, he suggests ice-cream from Christina's, and he is appalled that I have never been. He gets carrot cake, and I opt for mint chip.

Now the looks I get are even stranger--here I am in an ice cream shop, laughing with a police officer over which flavor to choose. I don't think I have ever been so at ease around a man carrying an automatic weapon.

Back in the car, we cruise until a call comes over the radio for a 911 call on Norfolk Street. Lights flashing and siren yelping, cars ahead of us pull over to let us speed by as I eat my mint chip ice cream. I could get used to this.

No one at the house on Norfolk Street seems to have called 911. The call supposedly came from a nine-year old, but the kids upstairs all deny calling. We stand in the stairwell with Officers DeFrancesco and Branley from Car 1, who also responded to the call.

"We would never call the police no matter what happened," declares a woman with a necklace that spells out 'love.'

After much questioning, Officer Derosiers discovers that a special needs child called 911 when he got upset by noise from a barbeque outside.

"Every time I get a call," says Officer Derosiers. "I want to service it to the best of my knowledge and to the best of my ability."

The next call is of a very different nature--four skinheads with short nightsticks are fighting on Waterhouse Street. Officer Derosiers is disappointed that the fight is over before we get there.

The next half an hour is quiet, and Officer Derosiers pulls into an MIT parking lot to give me a tour of the squad car. He shows me the wig-wag lights, which go back and forth, the take-downs, which are bright forward-facing lights, alley lights, which go to the side of the car, and the strobe lights.

He also shows me the three noise settings for the siren: The wail sounds more like an ambulance, the yelp is the usual police car noise, and the hi-lo sound just goes up and down and sounds like a car alarm.

Now that I am getting all my cop questions answered, I ask him whether most officers wear bullet-proof vests.

"It's not mandatory," Officer Derosiers says. "It's very uncomfortable. I wear mine in the winter--it keeps me nice and warm."

The only problem with the vests is that they don't protect against knives.

"A knife goes through the vest like a piece of paper. You can put a steel plate in the chest for a higher caliber gun than nine millimeter," Officer Derosiers explains.

The typical kid-in-a-cop-car, I ask him about his gun. It is a double-action 9 millimeter, which can fire 13 rounds per clip. Officers carry three clips, which means 39 rounds, in addition to one bullet already in the chamber.

"But the last thing I want to do is use that gun," Officer Derosiers says.

"B and E in progress on Max Street" a voice comes over the radio.

The sirens and lights come to life, and in seconds we're flying down back streets towards the call.

We are there within minutes, and another squad car is already parked outside. All night, no call from the radio has taken longer than five minutes to respond to.

Much to Officer Derosiers' disappointment, three suspects fled the scene before our arrival, and the description is too general to search for them.

Before we head into the station, Officer Derosiers sorts out a motor vehicle accident, deftly mediating between five teenagers whose car's front grill is missing and a woman in a new Jeep whose license has expired.

The two parties exchange information and we head back to the station.

While we are waiting for the midnight call of "It's over" to signal the end of the shift, we drive around the block. At a stoplight, another squad car bumps into the back of our car, causing us both to turn around. The officers in the other car jokingly turn on the take-downs, and we squint as they pull alongside laughing.

After a eight hours of chasing crime, the officers are cheery enough to tease each other.

"I do love my job," says Officer Derosiers. "Every day I put on my uniform and go to work and I'm a happy guy."

Alpha-Car

I am meant to go off at midnight, and after eight hours of observing I am exhausted.

Hell, after two hours of observing I was exhausted.

I can only imagine how tired the officers must be who have actually been working.

However, I'm in a police station at midnight, something that doesn't happen every Friday night, so I ask the shift commander to go out in another car.

My final assignment is with Officer Carlos F. Aquino and Officer Joseph G. Murphy in the alpha-car.

Officer Murphy used to be an accountant, and Officer Aquino is studying for a master's degree.

"[The police] are going after a more mature person. They want some professional background, or at least a diverse background," Officer Murphy says. "And I think it helps in how people relate."

A call comes over the radio about two intoxicated men trying to break into a shelter on Albany Street.

When we arrive, two men are standing by the door, both visibly drunk, and one with a gash over one eye and blood running down his face and shirt.

The supervisor of the shelter says the men have been trying to break the door down. He claims the men were fighting, and that one man hit the other in the eye.

The two men claim in broken English and slurred Spanish that the supervisor hit the man's head with the door.

They say they want to spend the night in the shelter, but the supervisor does not want to let them in as they appear to be violent.

An ambulance arrives, but the unharmed man does not want his companion to go to the hospital, despite the fact that the wound is still bleeding and the man appears disoriented.

The wounded man must sign a release if he won't go in the ambulance: He is so drunk that it takes a long time to get him to make him understand, and to physically get his hand near the paper. After he has signed and the two have walked off down the street, we climb back in the car. But as we drive off, we see the two men head back to the shelter, so the officers radio for the wagon to come pick them up.

Aside from a few sightings of the skinheads reported in the earlier fight, the night proceeds without incident, until I ask to be let off at Harvard around 2 a.m.

I am amazed about all of the officers' enthusiasm and sense of duty. If I didn't know better, I would say they must have all known I was coming and planned to say hello to the priest and take blind people out to dinner and talk passionately about respect.

In fact, the officer the police chief had planned for me to drive with was not there on that Friday, and it was all just a regular day.

As Superintendent Harold F. Murphy Jr. said, "the police force is like life insurance. You don't want to have to use it, but if you do, it's there."