It’s hard for someone my age to imagine this. In the city I grew up in, hitting a police officer was unthinkable. Part of this was from respect for authority, part from the certain knowledge that they would beat the snot out of you on the spot, whether you were white, brown, black, or purple-polka-dotted. Even out of uniform, our police were easy to spot since they had forearms the size of most people’s thighs.
tp: I know. If you’re a police officer, you must get used to some routine swatting about because you’re dealing with drunks and druggies a lot of the time; but from the description this is way past that.
Actually, UD, our city police took no crap, physical or verbal, from anyone back in those days. The first time I saw anything different happened when I was a freshman at BU: I was walking in Boston Common one day, and an unkempt guy sacked out on a bench told a cop to “screw off” after being told to move on. I was stunned–and waiting for the inevitable smack-down. It did not happen. The cop jollied the guy into sitting up and moved on. This is certainly a better approach than beating the stuffing out of someone, but the levels of defiance keep escalating. I still find it incredible that some player is so out of control as to do something like this.
August 24th, 2016 at 10:24AM
It’s hard for someone my age to imagine this. In the city I grew up in, hitting a police officer was unthinkable. Part of this was from respect for authority, part from the certain knowledge that they would beat the snot out of you on the spot, whether you were white, brown, black, or purple-polka-dotted. Even out of uniform, our police were easy to spot since they had forearms the size of most people’s thighs.
August 24th, 2016 at 11:00AM
tp: I know. If you’re a police officer, you must get used to some routine swatting about because you’re dealing with drunks and druggies a lot of the time; but from the description this is way past that.
August 24th, 2016 at 1:42PM
Actually, UD, our city police took no crap, physical or verbal, from anyone back in those days. The first time I saw anything different happened when I was a freshman at BU: I was walking in Boston Common one day, and an unkempt guy sacked out on a bench told a cop to “screw off” after being told to move on. I was stunned–and waiting for the inevitable smack-down. It did not happen. The cop jollied the guy into sitting up and moved on. This is certainly a better approach than beating the stuffing out of someone, but the levels of defiance keep escalating. I still find it incredible that some player is so out of control as to do something like this.