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in the neighborhoods they patrolled—blue-collar workers, civil servants, store owners, junkies, hookers, and, if they were willing, even drug dealers and thugs. Some officers maintained the standoffish attitude of a soldier occupying a hostile foreign country. Skip showed Lou that an effective cop is part of the community. A good cop knows whom in the neighborhood to call when something happens on his beat; a great cop has people calling him . Skip also advised Lou that he didn’t have to worry about internal affairs if he beat up a handcuffed suspect: He would lock up his protégé himself if Lou ever abused someone.
    A couple of years after he became a full-time officer, Lou showed that he knew how to handle himself when the guns came out, too.
    In January 1977, Lou was on a plainclothes assignment in a working-class Northeast D.C. neighborhood known as Brookland, near Catholic University. He went into a Safeway to grab an orange juice while his partner waited in their unmarked sedan on the street.
    Lou was standing in a checkout line when two men stormed into the store and pulled out sawed-offs from beneath their jackets. Without being told, many of the patrons and workers hit the ground; armed robbers took down the store fairly regularly, the employees and the shoppers knew the score. A few patrons and workers headed for the back of the store, away from the trouble. Lou quietly drifted to the back. He didn’t want the gunmen to see him unbutton his coat and retrieve the police revolver on his hip. Fighting back his fear, Lou held the gun in his shooting hand and slipped it into the pocket of his coat.
    Less than a minute later, a half-dozen squad cars roared onto the street in front of the store. As they were preparing to enter the store, the two bandits had aroused the suspicion of Lou’s partner, Freddy Merkle; he’d radioed for backup moments before the duo stormed in and took out their weapons. Freddy had a feel for developing trouble; he’d been in three shootouts with robbers in the neighborhood.
    The two bandits were shocked by how quickly the cops swarmed outside the store.
    “The rollers are here!” one of the gunmen yelled.
    Clutching the gun in his pocket, Lou walked to the front of the store, toward the gunmen. Outside, uniformed cops pulled out their service pistols and shotguns and took cover behind their cruisers.
    The gunmen saw the small army of cops and panicked. One of them started screaming and swearing. He headed for the back of the store, apparently looking for an escape route. The other bandit trained his weapon at the store manager’s head. Lou stepped to within a yard of that robber. The bandit didn’t seem to notice Lou; he was preoccupied with the cops gathered outside the store. Lou leveled the revolver in his pocket at the man’s torso. The bandit’s partner was out of Lou’s line of sight.
    Lou tensed. His right index finger caressed the trigger of his revolver. Lou thought it through: If he shot the bandit, would the robber reflexively shoot the store manager? How would the bandit’s partner react? Lou figured he was busy trying to flee. But he might start firing if Lou shot his partner. A bloodbath seemed inevitable.
    To Lou, it felt like he, the bandit, and the store manager were the only people in the store. Lou kept his gun pointed at the bandit for what seemed like a half hour. In reality, it was three, maybe four minutes. The gunman menacing the manager suddenly turned his head toward Lou.
    “What should I do?”
    “If I were you, I’d call 911 and talk to the police,” Lou said.
    To his astonished relief, the bandit lowered his shotgun, walked behind a service counter, and picked up the phone. He was patched through to a police commander in the parking lot.
    Minutes later, both gunmen dropped their weapons and walked out of the store with their hands in the air.
    Later that night, in the police station, Lou walked up to the bandit he’d almost shot. The man was