BOB HERBERT: Small Incidents Are Creating a Big Problem With the N.Y.P.D.

These are small incidents, but they are accumulating by the tens of thousands, and someday New Yorkers are going to be shocked by the power of the anger that these seemingly insignificant incidents have generated.

The principal of Bushwick Community High School in Brooklyn told me about a student who was gratuitously insulted by a police officer at a subway station the other day. The girl had lost her MetroCard and was carrying a note on the school’s letterhead asking that she be allowed to ride the train. This was fine with the token clerk, but the clerk told the girl to show the note to a cop on duty at the station.

The cop, in front of several onlookers, told the girl she was the oldest-looking high school student he had ever seen. He demanded that she tell him the square root of 12. He loudly declared that she was stupid and refused to let her board a train.

The girl left the station devastated and in tears. No big deal. Certainly not newsworthy. Just another case of cops being cops.

Several students from Bushwick Community High were among the three dozen or so who were swept up by the cops last week as they were walking toward a subway station, on their way to a wake for a teenage friend who had been murdered. For black and Hispanic youngsters, grieving can be a criminal offense........

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/05/bob-herbert-small-incidents-are.html

Police Departments...today are becoming like police departments were during the Reagan years....they don't want us to remember but we do...

Folks...these are teenagers...and this behaviour will move and perpetuated against adults....

I have a real bad feeling about this summer...

...its name is Baghdad.