When Paul Gillette stood with his classmates and took his oath to maintain the peace, enforce law and order and obey the rules of conduct for a police officer for the City of Los Angeles -- he fully believed that he could and would comply with every word of the oath, and every promise he made.
Gillette put in his time pounding a beat in South L.A. His obvious disdain for the human vermin infesting the streets at night did little to encourage familiarity. However, most folks felt safer and slept sounder when they knew officer Paul Gillette was on duty.
He met Ernie Stanton when they were both promoted to patrol cars and assigned the same shift. Ernie was red-headed, chubby, and so pathetically clumsy that he soon broke through Gillette's glacial exterior. He'd catch Paul grinning at his fumbling antics then, getting a clever smile on his face, he'd wink slyly at Gillette, as if he'd planned the whole scene. Paul never knew when to take him seriously, but they got along well together.
After several years of scraping up bodies off the pavement, busting drunk drivers, and trying to protect the good folks from the bad, Gillette and Ernie Stanton finally made Detective.
They were assigned to a task force code named, K.G.B.. It had nothing to do with the Russian secret police -- the initials stood for "Kids Gone Bad". Paul's assignment: find out which kids were ripping off local warehouses and, if possible, put them away for a long time.
Paul's investigation of local gang leader, Manny Hernandez and some of the pathetic little urchins under Manny's wing soon develops into a rapport and trust that causes Paul to more than stretch the rules. His actions earns him a severe dressing down and a transfer; even though he and Manny catch the real culprits.
In a series of cases that invariably present Paul with a moral dilema, he soon discovers that there is hardly ever a situation where blindly enforcing the law and arresting the lawbreaker is the totally right and just solution.
In his final case as a detective for the Los Angeles Police Force, he finally acknowledges that he, Paul Gillette and the Law need a divorce -- a divorce based on totally irreconcilable differences.
The story is told in six parts -- each a case in which Paul gets more and more involved in orchestrating the ending so that the good folks prevail, and the bad guys lose. Until the dangerous consequences of playing the game his way, puts the life of his friend and partner, Ernie in jeopardy, and almost gets a nice old lady killed because of his arrogant stupidity.