Not So Fast, Officer!

Jim Dwyer of the New York Times wrote a most interesting piece Wednesday about a phenomenon that seems to be on the rise. He profiled the case of an encounter between a bicyclist and a New York City police officer that is now resonating through the corridors of 1 Police Plaza (headquarters) here. A bit of explanation is in order here.

Periodically, an organization called Critical Mass holds a sort of  bike-a-thon through the streets of Manhattan. They do so to call attention to the need for more New Yorkers to start pedaling and stop driving, among other things. For reasons best known to themselves, the NYPD doesn't care much for these bicycle demonstrations. So it was last Friday that one cop decided to knock a cyclist off his bike with a picture perfect football tackle, then charge the rider with a variety of offenses.

There was only one problem. Somebody managed to make a videotape of the incident. Before you knew it, the whole thing was on YouTube, and nearly 400,000 people saw what was obviously a cop out of control. To make matters worse, people got a window into how cops will occasionally lie like a rug to cover their own misconduct. The story the officer told bore absolutely no resemblance to what the tape showed.

This isn't the first time this inexpensive digital monitoring has caught cops making up stories to justify arrests. Sadly, the offending cops don't get charged with perjury, as they should. In this most recent case, even the police commissioner, usually a staunch defender of his people, couldn't come up with a valid explanation for the incident, or the cop's version of it. The police union here is backing the cop, saying he was just trying to stop a cyclist who was a danger on the street.

Maybe he didn't see the tape.