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.
The part of the article on Neatorama here isn't complete.
There was more than one take about what happened, and only the black man's point of view was listed on neatorama. Here's what the two white cops had to say.
"When one officer spotted Zeigler's service weapon through the rolled-down window, he yelled "Gun!" according to sources who have spoken with the officers.
Both cops raised their weapons and ordered the driver out of the car, sources said.
Instead of saying he was an armed member of the NYPD, Zeigler shouted, "Don't you know who I am?" the sources said.
When one cop reached over to check the identification badge around Zeigler's neck, the chief pushed him away, sources said.
Only then did Zeigler tell the two officers his name and rank, those sources said."
Obviously, one of the stories has to be wrong.
This all reminds me of the story told me by an Ontario Provincial Police officer about a new style of car being presented to the media by the Commissioner. An officer drove it all the way to the photo-op, but was not allowed to deliver it to the Commissioner and have his 15 minutes of fame because he was white. At the end of his drive, he handed the keys over to a black officer, who then drove it the last 100 feet to the photo-op. Racism cuts both ways.
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.
I'm just sayin'. It's how our cops roll. :P