View From a Third Floor Window

I AM A MIDDLE CLASS  middle aged white guy who has lived in Philadelphia his entire adult life. Almost by definition, I look upon cops as the good guys doing a tough and thankless job. As a young hippie-haired college student at Temple University in the early 1970's I looked upon Philadelphia cops with a combination of fear and distrust. If you were young or black or both in Philadelphia back during what were called the Rizzo years, the dozen years between 1967 and 1979 when Frank Rizzo was either Police Commissioner or Mayor of Philadelphia, it seemed like Philly cops could get away with anything. Shakedowns, beatings, intimidation, general rudeness. And they also seemed to be everywhere. It was fashionable to call Philadelphia a "police state" and to spell Rizzo with two swastikas instead of two z's. It was no more clever then than now, like spelling America with three K's, but those were signs of the times.

I have seen the inside of the Roundhouse from the wrong entrance. I've been locked up once or thrice. But it's been years since I suffered an outbreak of handcuffs. I say this only to establish familiarity with the process once the line has been crossed. And that line is determined by the police, not common sense. Ask State Rep. Jewell Williams. I tell you this because I'm beginning to notice a new aggressiveness among some Philadelphia police. I can offer only anecdotal evidence, but I want to tell you one story from last Wednesday evening, about six-thirty, right in front of my house.

I live in West Philadelphia, in the 18th Police District, which embraces the best and worst of what our city has to offer. I live on a "nice" block with "nice" people, black and white, living side by side since 1957. We all know each other. About 6:30 I noticed a police car across the street with dome lights flashing and a backup police car blocking any traffic up or down the street. From a third floor window I watched for about 20 minutes as nothing happened. There was something about the hypervigilance of the back-up police that made me anxious. What was this? A stolen car? Outstanding warrants? Elderly neighbors started to gather because they couldn't drive down the street and it was a neighbor's car that had been stopped. They were interested, no comments, no menace. Then a neighbor, an architect in his 60's, stepped into the street and approached the stopped neighbor's car to ask what was up, and a young female police officer ordered him back so sharply that he raised his hands in surrender before backing up. There was not a civilian who saw this who didn't think that the attitude of the police was incomprehensibly, unnecessarily, bewilderingly confrontational. There are no "routine" car stops but how often do back up officers who block traffic for half an hour write citations for an expired inspection sticker on another neighbor's legally parked car during a car stop? If this is part of operation "Pressure Point," believe me we get the point. And it feels strangely familiar.