NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of Brooklyn, N.Y., residents took to the streets and set garbage can fires to protest against the treatment of a 75-year-old caterer they said was beaten by police officers during a traffic stop.Talking on a cell phone while driving is dangerous and also, by the way, illegal. When you do it, the cops can stop you and probably even arrest you. Just because you're Orthodox and in an Orthodox neighborhood doesn't mean you get a free pass.
Police denied mistreating the man Tuesday, identified by residents as Arthur Schick, and officers in riot gear fanned out to clear the crowd, which lingered for hours.
Sariel Widawsky, co-owner of the Schick's Bakery, said he saw the traffic stop through the front window of his store, which once was owned by Schick's mother. He said he saw police push Schick, whom he described as a friend he has known since 1960.
"They pushed Arthur against the car and physically manhandled him in a way unbefitting such a well-respected and liked member of the community," Widawsky said.
"He shouldn't be treated like that."
He said police "acted as if they were going to a riot, pulling out batons and spaying Mace and abusing their power."
The man was pulled over in Brooklyn for talking on his cellphone while driving, police said. He resisted the officers during the stop and was arrested with two other people who meddled in the incident, police said.
Protesters set small fires and blocked streets while Schick's car sat parked in front of the bakery bearing his name.
The incident happened in an Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood on one of the busiest shopping days before Passover. (LINK)
Here's some more from the Daily News:
??? Okay it's not nice to call someone a nigger, but its a little less threatening to be called that when you happen to be NOT BLACK. Also, I imagine police get angry when you're resisting arrest.Arthur Schick, 75, leveled serious charges against the NYPD - saying he was arrested without cause in heavily Hasidic Borough Park Tuesday night and roughly placed inside a NYPD van by cops who used the N-word.
"The van had a high step and I asked for help getting into it. Instead, they pushed me down into the van," he said. "And as I was getting pushed into the van, I fell forward."
It was at that moment, Schick charged, that a cop made a shocking statement: "This is the way we treat a n-----."
NYPD officials said an investigation has been launched into Schick's arrest and what cops said to him.
(hat tip to Robert "Byrd, except this Byrd would never vote for Alito" Hatch-Miller and the Acme Heartmaker Machine)
But just in case, get your sandals and Hawaiian shirts ready before summer comes.
The speech contained plenty of lines worthy of ridicule, and Bush certainly uses his share of dishonest conservative catchphrases ("activist judges" for instance). But spreading freedom around the world is--or should be--a paramount goal of liberalism. Meanwhile, terrorism remains a real threat to America, and a source of continuing death and destruction the world over. As for "weapons of mass destruction": A fanatical regime in Iran with a history of sponsoring terrorism and a stated desire to see Israel "wiped off the map" is well on its way to having such weapons. This is not an invention of the Republican imagination; it is reality.