Some People Shouldn’t Be in a Position of Authority

And that’s why the people who have said to me something along the lines of "Well, if you do what the police say you won’t have a problem” just don’t get it.

That is not supporting the police. That is enabling the bad ones to do the things that the good ones find abhorrent.

That must be what it’s like to live in, say, Myanmar.

Some have said that the officers were justified in their actions because when they put their sirens on, Nazario didn’t initially stop. And I understand that argument.

But the circumstances of that “stop” turned out to be illegal, since the officers were aware that Nazario had temporary plates and still pursued him. The circumstances of that “stop” were also charged because there was no reasonable suspicion that the driver had done anything wrong, that he was weaving, that he was speeding, that he was causing a threat to other drivers. They apparently had nothing other than their subjective sense that this car was not his car.

And the worst thing about it is that the driver of that car was in the military. Here you have a man wearing the uniform of his country being treated as if he was a second-class citizen, by a brutish officer who - when told by Nazario that he was afraid of getting out of the car - was told “you should be afraid.”

“You should be afraid.” No American should ever say that to an American soldier, an Army medic. The fact that another man in uniform said it is reprehensible.

I hate that I have to write this column, at this time. But if I remain silent when this sort of thing happens, I have no right to shout out my support for the honorable warriors who police our streets competently, courageously and with humility every day, every hour, every minute. And I have no intention of ever giving up that right.

In my daily walks, I pass by the memorial plaque that commemorates the place where Daniel Faulkner was murdered by Mumia abu Jamal. I also walk by the memorials to Charles Knox, and the mural to Sgt. Robert Wilson.

I hope they’d understand why I wrote this column.

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