Product Description

"The West Si-I-I-I-de." There is a rhythm to the way you say it, letting the last word slide. There is a rhythm to the way life ebbs and flows here, different from the rest of the city, as if life here was determined by the spell of a separate moon, with its own tides. If the West Side could be embodied in the soul of a man, he'd gamble and take his losses without crying; he'd smoke a good cigar on his last three bucks and he'd give you a wink when he passed you on the street. The West Side - one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. A young policeman named Mike Cronin, who'd lost his foot in Vietnam, came to work on the West Side more than three decades ago, getting to know the broken curbs of every drug corner and which buildings had back steps that creaked, getting people to tell him things they never thought they'd tell a cop, where the guns, the drugs and the shooters were hidden. He'd learn the fine line one must walk to be a street cop, the balancing act between toughness and fairness and the ability to enforce the law without being brutal, to not take things personally and to play by the rules when the criminals don't have to, or don't want to. He'd seen men grow rich off drugs and bodies found crumpled cold from overdoses. Over time, Cronin would see change; he'd see names change and faces change, and ages, they'd get younger but, like the turn of seasons that come back upon themselves, he'd see that little had changed at all. This is a story of the West Side through his eyes ... through the eyes of a cop called Cronie.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #560569 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-16
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

Customer Reviews

THE REAL WEST SIDE STORY
Officer Cronin's story is, by turns, inspriational and horrifying. The writing is surely supra-saline. The descriptions of conditions and life on Chicago's West Side are so realistic, one wishes this were a work of fiction. Alas, it is all too true, God help us.
Recommendation: Buy it if you can. Read it if you dare.

Life in a World most of us will never visit.
What a Book! It shows the seamy underbelly of the City. Reading This book made me wonder how we can ever break the cycle of drugs and the lifestyle that goes with that that is perpetuated from generation to generation. I think of the little kids sitting on a urine soaked mattress in a "smoke house" watching their parents smoke and/or sell crack and the bigger kids being lookouts for $100.00 a day. No wonder they don't want to go to school. I don't know what the answer is and there is no answer in the book. This is a social workers nightmare. It reminds me of Dante's Inferno where at the entrance into Hell it says "Abandon Hope All ye Who Enter Here". How do they break out? I don't think they want to break out. They are captives of their habit.
Policemen like Cronin can only keep the problem from spilling over into other communities but can never stop what is going on in this community.
It is a picture of a subculture that most of us will never visit. It makes me feel there is no solution for this problem.