When will cops stop acting disorderly?

by Buzz Bissinger

A black thing? A racial-profiling thing? A racist thing?

Those are the motivations most often proffered in the saga of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. vs. the Cambridge police. What other possible explanations are there for a white officer stopping a 58-year-old black man with a cane, in the heinous act of trying to open the door of his own house? But it wasn't a black thing. Or a racial-profiling thing. Or a racist thing.

It was a cop thing.

It was a thing motivated by the very nature of many police officers - more thin-skinned than a supermodel, filled with self-pity and feelings of persecution over a perceived lack of appreciation, poised to disturb the peace rather than try at all costs to keep it because of their innate aggressiveness and thirst for action, disdainful of the public regardless of race and color and creed. (read rest of the story)