Doojie, Eichmann, and Bobo are squatters and small time dope dealers living in a two-car garage behind the Del Rosa Laundromat on Mission Street in San Francisco. Their prices are reasonable, the quality of their product "questionable." Flaherty is a "rank-and-file cowboy," a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound five-foot-seven cop in skin-tight Gap jeans who carries a chrome-plated Smith and Wesson pistol and boasts the departmental record for arrests made in the line of duty.

But Flaherty is losing control, and the lives of all four characters become inextricably linked after Doojie watches him shoot a man. Police and Thieves offers a new take on noir: Doojie relies on the shtetl wisdom of his grandparents to get through his identity crises; the demented gang leader is trying to raise a family; Bobo mourns his lost virginity; and Flaherty, the sadistic cop, is so bent on their destruction that he hardly notices his own.