Staff Editorial: (NY)PD Black and Blues

While people of color in New York City might have had a feeling that some members of the New York Police Department preferred their targets to be black and brown, who would have thought that they really liked their targets "fried?"

An NYPD officer recently made headlines after bragging to a friend about his false arrest of a Black man. Claiming to be in search of drugs, the officer conducted a stop-and-frisk search on the Staten Island man. After no drugs were found and the man complained about being unnecessarily harassed, the officer stated his lack of appreciation for the man's attitude and arrested him, charging him with resisting arrest.

According to The New York Times, the officer went on to make false claims on the police report, stating that the man had "kicked" and "pushed" him. The man was then held in police custody for 36 hours.

However, the officer, who already faced legal trouble due to accusations of fraud related to another non-NYPD case, found that the tables were turned when government officials recorded a conversation between the officer and his friend. During the conversation, the officer proudly boasted about his previous arrest, stating that he had "fried another nigger" and that it was "no big deal."

Two other NYPD officers on trial in their department for the 50-shot killing of the soon-to-be- married Sean Bell in Queens in 2006 attempted to negotiate a "deal" of their own. Although the officers involved in the incident were acquitted of their criminal charges in 2008, the judge who presided over the case required that the issue of the officers' professional misconduct be handled by the police department.

While one of the five officers involved decided to leave the police department, another officer is working to get his job back, after having been placed on office duty. Two other officers have stated that they are willing to retire and sacrifice some of their salaries.

As the officer's recorded comments regarding his false arrest of the Black man demonstrate, racial profiling and police brutality have been a fact of life for people of color for a long time. The beating of Rodney King 20 years ago and the murder of Oscar Grant two years ago are only recent examples of the span of time over which these problems have persisted and been caught on tape.

In many ways, even more disturbing than the officer's "frying" comments is the fact that he was still being allowed to police the community with charges already pending against him.

With all of this in mind, his word still carried enough wait to lead to a man being detained for 36 hours. This freedom and clout seems to extend so far that officers can kill someone and then request retirement with payment, however reduced, as their punishment.

Incidents like these are reminders of how distrust between police and minorities can lead to disaster. Just as a police officer working a beat does not what situations he or she may encounter, civilians and community residents do not know the background, influence, or intentions of the people designated to protect them.

Our View: These latest examples in the never-ending saga of minorities versus the police continue to demonstrate the destructive effects of professional corruption and mutual distrust.