A little about me: I am loud and obnoxious; I will interrupt you when you are talking and I will not apologize for it. I probably won't even notice I did it. I'm argumentative and I think I'm always right. I never give up when I'm making a point and I never give in if you disagree with me. I will repeat the same thing over and over again until your ears bleed and you finally agree with me just to get me to shut up. I'm smart enough to always have a retort to whatever it is you have to say, but not smart enough to know when I've lost. I have to win. Have to. And I am the wordiest little brat you've ever met.
That's just me. Doesn't sound great, right? Well those are my talents; I didn't ask for them, but they're what I got. And as a wise man once said, "Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it, that's your gift back to God." I am a prosecutor. I take my abilities, and my orneriness, and I speak for those injured individuals and communities who cannot speak for themselves. I fight for little pieces of justice every day, and more days than not - I get some. I am not paid much, but I am proud every night when I go home.
There are heroes in this world. They're called District Attorneys. They don't get to have clients, people who smile at them at the end of the trial, who look them in the eye and say, "thank you." Nobody is there to appreciate the District Attorney, because we work for the state. And our gratitude comes only from knowing there's a tide out there. A tide the size of a tsunami coming out of a bottomless cesspool. A tide called crime, which, if left unchecked will rob every American of his freedom. A tide which strips individuals of the privilege of being able to, to walk down a dark street or take twenty dollars out of an ATM machine without fear of being mugged. All Congress does is talk, but it's the District Attorney who grabs his sword, who digs into the trenches and fights the fight. Who dogs justice day, after day, after day without thanks, without so much as a simple pat on the back. But we do it. We do it, we do it because we are the crusaders, the last frontier of American justice. Knowing that if a man cannot feel safe, he can never, never feel free.
- Richard Bay, "The Practice" (1997)
