BREA, CALIF. — The kid looks like he’s about 13 or 14 years old, but it’s difficult to say for sure because his head is bent and he’s pulled the hood of his baggy, brown sweatshirt over his scruffy, chin-length hair. Keeping his eyes downward, he lopes along Birch Street, while the morning rush hour traffic whizzes by. It’s 8:35 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and because he’s walking near a shopping center in an industrial part of town, it’s clear that he’s not headed toward school.

Officer Irene Crews, 28, pulls her squad car behind him and sounds the siren briefly to get his attention. He turns around, and she motions to him.

Outside her car, Crews keeps both her hands on her belt and begins asking questions. He tells her that he had to pick something up at his friend’s house and intended to return to school and that he’s cleared it with his mom. Crews listens while chewing her bottom lip and furrowing her brow. She invites him to sit on the hood of her car while she learns from dispatch that he’s lying.

Putting him in the backseat and warning him not to touch her rifles, she heads toward his mother’s office.

“See? Isn’t it easier to just tell the police the truth?” she says, making eye contact from her rearview mirror. “Now what do I think you are?”

“A liar,” responds the kid matter-of-factly.

“What’s the lesson you’ve learned here today?”

He laughs sheepishly. “Don’t lie.”

Crews nods. “Don’t lie and don’t what?”

“Skip school.”

“There you go.”

Settling into his seat, the kid explains that he doesn’t like his school, since all his friends attend a different one out of his district. “But the good thing is I have a girlfriend now,” he says and then remarks that this squad car is pretty nice compared to the other ones he’s been in. He babbles on, saying how he likes getting his ears pierced and plans on getting 12-gauge studs soon. Crews engages him, asking questions and responding.

Brea police officers at an early morning meeting.

Pulling up to a building, Crews parks her car and then escorts the kid in to find his mother, who is frustrated but gracious.

“She seemed like a really nice mom, too,” says Crews. “I’ve been to one call where this Korean girl stole something from Robinsons-May [department store]. … Her mom comes in and just does a straight sock to the face.”

Starting up her car and pulling out of the loading zone and onto the street, Crews remembers how her own strict Korean mother reacted when she cut class in high school and says she wishes she had never ditched a single day.

“I explained to him in there, ‘You have to stay in school or you’re not gonna do anything in life,’” she says. “It’s so hard because they’re so young and they don’t want to listen. … [With] kids you can’t come off as a tough guy, but at the same time, you have to be stern so they understand it is a serious thing.”