New York 2007 = Chicago 1968

The New York cops, it seems, are getting totally out of control, shades of Chicago in 1968. First, this morning, I came across this column in the NY Times by Bob Herbert which tells the story of the Principal, Mr. Soguero, at the Bronx Guild high school after trying to protect a young girl from police harassment.

The girl, who was 16, had apparently uttered a curse word in a hallway. While that is undoubtedly inappropriate behavior, it is hardly a criminal offense. The police officer, Juan Gonzalez, who was part of a security task force assigned to the school, had followed the girl into the classroom.

Mr. Soguero quieted things down and asked the officer to leave the room, which he did. “I got the girl to sit down and I told her I would talk to her later to address this,” Mr. Soguero said. He thought the crisis was over.

The principal was shocked when he walked out of the classroom. Officer Gonzalez was waiting and made it clear that he wanted the girl arrested.

“He told me,” said Mr. Soguero in the interview, “that I had two minutes to ‘bring her out here.’ I said, ‘I’m not bringing her out here.’ ”

The angry officer, according to Mr. Soguero, barged past him and into the classroom. “I followed him,” said Mr. Soguero, “and he’s pushing desks aside, walking through students to get at her, disrupting everything. She’s sitting in a chair. He grabs her arm, her left arm with his right hand, and he’s reaching back to grab his cuffs. At that point I walked around him and physically stood in between the two of them.”

This sort of thing, the police wildly overreacting to behavior by schoolkids that is not criminal, happens much more often than most New Yorkers realize. Officer Gonzalez behaved as if he were rounding up the James gang. He arrested the girl. He arrested Mr. Soguero. And he arrested a school aide who had tried to come to the principal’s defense.

Mr. Soguero was handcuffed in full view of everyone — students, teachers, staff — and marched out of the school. Later the police paraded him in front of news photographers in a humiliating “perp walk.”

Then, I saw this piece:

NEW YORK - Reverend Billy says he wants the New York Police Department to get right with the Constitution.

The performance artist — a cross between a street-corner preacher and an Elvis impersonator (but blond) — was arrested on harassment charges last week while reciting the First Amendment through a megaphone in Manhattan's Union Square. On Monday, he donned his trademark white suit and returned to the scene of his alleged sin to demand that police repent.

"It feels so good to be back on the very spot where I was denied my First Amendment rights by reciting the First Amendment," he told reporters over the din of an NYPD helicopter hovering overhead.

…Talen, 57, has spent years using his mock persona as a fire-and-brimstone evangelist to rail against consumer culture — what he portrays as the Disneyfication of Manhattan. He was arrested this year on misdemeanor trespassing charges for protesting at a Starbucks; that case is pending.

His latest run-in with the law began after he turned up to support people gathering in Union Square last Friday for the monthly Critical Mass bike ride asserting cyclists' rights.

The NYPD has aggressively policed the rides, arguing that they can interfere with traffic and threaten public safety. Advocates for Critical Mass have accused police of infringing on the riders' constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly.

The video shows Talen preaching the "44 beautiful words of the First Amendment" to a visibly annoyed congregation of police commanders huddled a few feet away. At one point, an officer approaches and warns him that his sermon is breaking the law.

"What's the law?" Talen asks.

"Harassment," the officer answers.

When Talen persists, another officer comes up behind him and slaps on handcuffs. When being put in a police van, the satirist shouts, "We have a right to peaceful assembly!"

Talen was held overnight before being released without bail. A criminal complaint alleges he harassed police officers by approaching them and "repeatedly shouting at such officers through a non-electric bullhorn."

Something is truly wrong with a society in which every authority figure believes he can bully anyone else around without cause. I lay the blame first at the feet of Michael Bloomberg, who has done nothing to minimize this, and second at the feet of king George the Wth., who has done everything to promote this kind of authoritarian bullying.