‘I can’t believe he just fuckin’ maced her.’

That's a quote from an eyewitness report of the actions of New York City Police Department Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. It was uttered, so the author of this article wrote, by another NYPD officer. It's emerging that there is some sort of divide among NYPD officers in uniform: those in the blue shirts apparently are still required to act like responsible police officers. Those in white shirts can behave like thugs. As the article continues:

At this point, the crowd of twenty or so caught in the orange fence is shouting “Shame! Shame! Who are you protecting?! YOU are the 99 percent! You’re fighting your own people!” A white-shirt, now known to be NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, comes from the left, walks straight up to the three young girls at the front of the crowd, and pepper-sprays them in the face for a few seconds, continuing as they scream “No! Why are you doing that?!” The rest of us in the crowd turn away from the spray, but it’s unavoidable. My left eye burns and goes blind and tears start streaming down my face. Frank grabs my arm and shoves us through the small gap between the orange fence and the brick wall while everyone stares in shock and horror at the two girls on the ground and two more doubled over screaming as their eyes ooze. In the street I shout for water to rinse my eyes or give to the girls on the ground, but no one responds. One of the blue-shirts, tall and bald, stares in disbelief and says, “I can’t believe he just fuckin’ maced her.” And it becomes clear that the white-shirts are a different species. We need to get out of there.

Why I Was Maced at the Wall Street Protests

As someone commented today at a place I can't remember, it appears that white is the new brown.

I've written this before, but it bears repeating - police who feel no constraints on their use of force are as much a danger to their communities as the criminals are. Thugs in uniform need to be called out and disciplined. My guess is that this won't happen, because it's pretty clear that Wall Street will be kept open at all costs, and the government of New York City will not tolerate even the most unlikely efforts to do that.

As I've also written before, they work for the people who matter, and neither I nor anyone likely to be reading here is among those people.