a really nasty white woman objected to black people contaminating their white pool and slapped the black girl who did not quietly pick up and leave.

OK, it's a private neighborhood pool, but when some of the neighbors are black, they get in-- a point lost on certain nasty white people.

The cop lost it. In the heat of the moment he completely lost his cool and went mental on a teenage black girl. He forgot that the point of the police is to defuse situations in this brave new world, not inflame them. Sure, there was a lot of yelling going on by the time the cops got there, but cops are supposed to know how to deal with that.

He is now suspended, so let's see how this plays out.

to assign the officer permanent desk duty.

He needs to be fired, not just for this incident but to prevent something much worse the next time he loses it.

She watches people being shoved into the ground and a gun drawn and she walks off with a "Pfft what do I care?" air about her.

The poor dear!

We had this young guy from Nebraska, really great kid. He comes to me one day (I was a few years older than most the single soldiers) and says,

"I don't really know how to say this"
Me "Are you homesick?"
"no, it's just that I've never SEEN a black person in real life, only on TV, and now I am rooming with one"
Me "Does it bother you?"
"No, it's just weird"
Me "Well you are out in the world. A LONG way from Nebraska"
"yeah I guess so"

He didn't have a problem he was just thrown completely out of his norm. He was from middle of nowhere - 8 in his graduating class, next door neighbor was 10 miles away.

seems that you have to be a knee jerk racist just to qualify for a job as a cop!

Segregationist bastards.

and raised in greenville, SC. they lived in a gated community that had a swimming pool. several times they invited their AA friends over to swim. no one dared to say anything whether they liked it or not.

lived in Smithsburg, MD, now a DC suburb, but then a remnant of the dark days.

My mother told me that during the Depression he owned a store similar to Agway and told the local farmers that they were all in it together so they had credit as long as he could keep the place stocked. The war started and everyone was doing well so he got paid back in full and was a local hero. He didn't go after the few farmers who went under and couldn't pay, which made him even more loved.

So, he had this black handyman whose church was a few miles away. Ol' Uncle Gusty said there was no reason for this man to walk miles to a church and invited him to sit at his front pew. I never heard anything about how the locals really felt, or whether the handyman felt odd about the whole thing, but I did hear that they never said a word to Uncle Gusty about it.

Uncle Gusty and Aunt Edith never preached or made a big deal out of things, but they set a quiet example for the rest of us.