the red squad video man is:

The unmarked police car was at the head of a line of traffic stopped during Friday's Critical Mass bike ride. As 1,500 riders passed peacefully in the twilight at Market and Van Ness, SFPD Officer Andrew Cohen said, "There are a lot of familiar faces here."

Just then an attractive young woman rolled up and flashed a big smile for Cohen and his partner, Officer Bob Mammone. She said, "You guys ought to be out here on bikes."

"We wish we were," said Cohen. As the young woman pedaled away, Cohen said to Mammone, "OK, tell the story."

It seems that at an earlier protest, Mammone had been with officers arresting people blocking Sixth and Market streets. He had to go to the bathroom, so he went into a nearby taqueria and descended to the basement facilities. There he found five protesters, including the woman who had stopped her bike to say hello.

"They thought they were big outlaws and I was like the police enemy coming to get them," said Mammone. "I said, 'Hey, I just need to use the bathroom.' "

Afterward, he led the protesters through police lines. "Since then, I'm wonderful," he joked.

Many protesters don't think of the cops as wonderful, despite the department's professionalism during endless demonstrations. San Francisco cops also bear the burden of the indictments of five of their command staff in the so-called Fajitagate scandal.

"Please don't beat us, feed us fajitas!" protesters have chanted.



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Cops have their own sense of humor. Cohen, who works as a public affairs officer with Mammone, kept joking that I was "embedded" with them as he introduced me to officers.
Officer Brian Darcy bore a scar under his eye where he was hit with a bolt shot from a slingshot during the big traffic blockades 11 days ago. A decade earlier, during the Gulf War protests, he had been hit with a piece of concrete.

"Guys don't know whether to stand next to me or away from me," said Darcy. "If they stand next to me, they're not going to be the one who gets hit."

How frustrating can police work be? Just before the Critical Mass ride started, Cohen and Mammone got a flat tire on Market Street. They changed the tire, only to find the spare was flat. When they stood up, they discovered they'd gotten a parking ticket.

This is the kind of stuff you don't see in the movies.

Movies don't show most of what police see. Mammone, who worked for years in the Tenderloin, said, "I had full days in which I never talked to anyone who wasn't mentally ill or impaired by alcohol or drugs. You end up exhausted by it."

On Eddy Street, Cohen and Mammone stopped to eject an aggressive drunk from a Carl's Jr. Afterward, Mammone muttered to himself, "Just move it along."

We had just been talking about San Francisco's lack of a decent policy for public drunkenness.



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At Tenderloin Station, officers were heading out for Critical Mass. Cohen asked Officers Mark Cota and Dennis O'Mahoney how they were feeling. He was concerned because both had been shot in the legs by a bank robber a few years ago. They were stoical, but said running around the streets for days hadn't helped.
Cota and O'Mahoney were equally stone-faced about the police scandal. "There's a lot of back-stabbing going on," said Cota. When asked if they knew who was doing the back-stabbing, he said, "Oh, we know."

Commander Robert Puts was out on Market Street where he was in charge of monitoring an anti-war demonstration happening simultaneously with Critical Mass. When asked if he hears any appreciation for the cops' work on the streets, Puts said, "You know, we do. It's a morale booster, but a bigger morale booster will be when we get our five guys back -- the five who were indicted."

You might think the demonstrations would wear down the morale of a department already hurt by scandal, but Puts was one of many cops with a renewed pride in the department.

Not everyone appreciated media coverage of the scandal. When Cohen introduced me to a veteran officer, the man angrily said he didn't want to talk to anybody from The Chronicle. He added that it was nothing personal.

Nothing personal. That's what cops have to tell themselves.

Bringing up the rear of the Critical Mass parade was a naked man on a bicycle yelling "Critical Ass!" That's what cops called the ride, but it was more literal in his case. While we were laughing, the only hostile bicyclist we saw all day started cussing out Cohen and Mammone. They just took it.

"When this happens, you tell yourself he's in a lot of pain to hate someone he doesn't even know," said Mammone.

Then he added sadly, "I don't know which is worse -- being hated by someone you know or someone you don't know."

Rob Morse's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. His e-mail address is rmorse [at] sfchronicle.com