Some of NYPD's finests are in trouble: two undercover police officers ordered a black man out of his parked car with guns drawn ... without realizing that the guy's an off-duty NYPD chief!
"How you can not know or recognize a chief in a department SUV with ID around his neck, I don't know," a police source said.
Chief Douglas Zeigler, 60, head of the Community Affairs Bureau, was in his NYPD-issued vehicle near a fire hydrant when two plainclothes cops approached on May 2, sources said.
One officer walked up on each side of the SUV at 57th Ave. and Xenia St. in Corona about 7 p.m. and told the driver to roll down the heavily tinted windows, sources said.
What happened next is in dispute. In his briefing to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Zeigler said the two cops, who are white, had no legitimate reason to approach his SUV, ranking sources said.
After they ordered him to get out, one officer did not believe the NYPD identification Zeigler gave him.
I'm just sayin'. It's how our cops roll. :P
That guy is 60 years old?
My god he looks half that.
I know black guys age very well, but frankly this looks more like the picture of Dorian Gray than evolutionary good fortune and clean living.
I'm over 20 years his junior and look like his Dad..except white.
AS for racism, yeah sure there was probably a bit, but as soon as some one shouts GUN cops tewnd to spring into action regardless.
If they hadn't responded to a gun warning they'd be in a lot of trouble.
Better to draw down on a friendly than be thought a NON racist, but in the past tense.
Also there is the unpleasent truth that a disproprtionate amount of crime is perpetrated by black men.
It's no doubt a symptom of a more fundamental inequality and deeper seated racism but if you were a copper on the street I think that you'd no longer care about such niceties regardless of whether you were black or white.
Hell no one is perfect, and we tend to get less so when some we feel our lives are threatened.