It Never Ends

A couple of White officers get disciplined after picking on the wrong policeman.
Talk about the worst timing in the world. Just as the New York Police Department is fighting a lawsuit alleging years of racial profiling, a White officer decides to confront a motorist who happened to be one of the highest-ranking commanders on the force, an NYPD spokesman acknowledged this weekend. Making bad matters worse, the officer straight-up dissed the police honcho, who was off duty and wearing plainclothes. “He dealt with the chief in a discourteous manner, which is unacceptable,” police spokesman Paul Browne told The Associated Press, adding that the officer was disciplined for acting “in a discourteous manner.” Apparently Chief Douglas Zeigler, the head of the NYPD’s Community Affairs Bureau and the highest uniformed Black officer on the force, was sitting in his department-issued sport utility vehicle in Queens when two White officers approached, Browne said. When Zeigler identified himself, that wasn’t enough for one of the officers, who wrested the door open, AP reported. The three-star commander reportedly was parked near a fire hydrant. The irony of the incident didn’t escape the Rev. Al Sharpton, New York’s most renowned police critic and outspoken opponent of racial profiling. “You can’t make this stuff up!” Sharpton said at a rally calling for a federal investigation into the three officers acquitted of killing Sean Bell, the young Black man shot to death in a hail of 50 bullets on the eve of his wedding day. “The problem isn’t that they didn’t recognize him. It is that they don’t recognize our rights!”