I thought I was going to have to work hard at getting my partner against crime for the night to open up to me. Not so. The police officer and I spent more of the ride along gossiping and giggling than talking about the tough Huntington Park streets.

Officer Elsa Cobian is 27—just two years older than me. She’s five-foot-four and about 120 pounds, maybe less. She wears a bulletproof vest and eye shadow, blush, lipstick and lip liner. During our bathroom breaks, we would both reapply.

In a field dominated by men, she does not try to mask her femininity.

Elsa is one of two female street cops out of 67 sworn personnel at the Huntington Park Police Department. On the night I show up a couple weeks ago, Elsa is the only officer riding alone, so she gets me.

Right off the bat, Elsa makes it clear she understands the risks involved in her job.

“I always pretend like everybody has guns, everybody that I’m going to encounter,” she says. “Because at the end of the night, I want to go home alive. I want to see my family—well, my pets.” She laughs. “I’m not married.”

The first call we answer is for domestic violence. We drive up to the house and both get out. A couple of guys are hanging around outside. We walk up to the complex of bright blue one-story homes. Elsa knocks on the door and identifies herself. The woman inside sees me and gets upset. “Who’s that? Why isn’t she in uniform? I don’t want strangers looking inside my house.”

Elsa tells me to wait outside while she goes in.

I stand there, in the middle of the complex, not knowing if I am alone. What if the potentially abusive boyfriend jumps out and starts shooting? I am wearing a bulletproof vest, but what about my neck, my head? Am I safe because I am with a police officer, or does that make me a target?

The woman inside tells Elsa she does not want to talk to a female officer. A backup arrives—a male—and he and Elsa go back inside. Nope, she doesn’t want to talk to him either. They are too late, she says. The boyfriend has already gotten away and taken her car.

Elsa and the backup leave, and I follow.

We decide to pick up dinner. As we drive, Elsa emails messages to the other officers from her laptop, which sits open in front of her dashboard so she can monitor the calls and location of the other patrol cars. Her colleagues have already eaten. On the way to McDonald’s, we spot two young girls who look like they are writing on a cement wall.

“Are they tagging?” Elsa asks. She calls it in on her walkie-talkie, parks the car in the intersection, tells me to stay seated, jumps out and yells at the two girls to stop and get on the ground. She pats them down one at a time. One girl is in jeans, the other in red, cut sweatpants. They say they’re 12 years old. The backup arrives.

“Do you understand why I stopped you?” Elsa shouts at them. “Why do you think I stopped you?”

They tell her they were not tagging; they were only tracing the graffiti on the wall with their fingers.

Elsa’s voice changes. Like a social worker, she tells them they should not be tracing graffiti because it looks like they are tagging. “OK?” she says. “Go home. Go home right now—I don’t want to see you out on the street.”

She joins me in the car, and we are off again.

“What is the scariest thing that has ever happened to you on the job?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she answers. “I don’t get scared.”

“Seriously?” I respond, totally shocked. “I’ve already been scared three times!” We laugh.

Elsa tells me she grew up in Boyle Heights, one of Los Angeles’ toughest neighborhoods. Her parents could have afforded to move out, but her dad said he knew the neighbors and felt safe there. He was very strict, she said, “a typical Mexican family.” She is the youngest of five siblings. She wasn’t allowed to go out or party. Her social life consisted of talking to a friend who lived nearby from her porch. She loved school and worked hard.

When she finally wanted to date, her dad told her she would have to marry the first guy she dated. She was 18 and told her romantic interest that. He was five years older and head over heels for her. They dated and got married when she was 19. It was a disaster, she said.

Elsa said she wanted to become a police officer since she was a kid. It started with her school’s DARE program. The DARE representative was a woman. She thought, “Wow! They have female officers?” She became the class assistant and loved it. That cop—Elsa doesn’t remember her face, just her name, Officer Smith—became her role model.

Elsa later decided she wanted to go to the academy. Her dad supported her. Her mom wasn’t sure she could make it. Her husband told her she wasn’t allowed to do it. She divorced him and became a police officer.

Elsa has been with the Huntington Park Police Department for two years. She finished her 18-month probation period last August.

She says her job is not for everyone. “It takes a strong person mentally,” she says. “I’m hearing this guy tell me that he penetrated this little 6 year old. And you have to have this composure to listen to them and talk to them and hear them out.”

Elsa says her colleagues and her talk at work about what they see—the homicides, the rapes, the grieving families. They vent, and then they move on.

We stop for gas, and Elsa teaches me how to use the walkie-talkie and shotgun in the car. Just in case my partner for the night goes down, I need to be prepared.

I want to see action—and in a very, very sick way, I hope that something dramatic happens so I have a story to write home about. But I do not want to use the shotgun. Even holding it is scary.

I’ll leave the acts of courage for Elsa. She looks like she can handle it.

——
Hanna Ingber Win is a staff editor and writer for Pop and Politics. Pushing Off is a column of her dispatches from twentysomething land. Graffiti by Banksy.