On Duty Mailman Arrested; Only Crime I See Is "Working While Black"

When this first happened I thought about writing something on it, but I changed my mind because I thought it wouldn't go anywhere. Now I find it's getting a bit more interesting, so here goes.

On March 17, 2016, 27 year old Glenn Grays was delivering mail on his usual route in Brooklyn, New York. 

He stopped his truck on a narrow street, (as mail persons often do!), and as he was coming down the steps of the truck a car with four white men in jeans and sweatshirts in it came racing around the corner., nearly sideswiping Grays and causing him to jump back up into his truck to avoid being struck. As most drivers will, (especially in cities like New York) Mr. Grays yelled at the car and its occupants. He then turned back to the task at hand, which was delivering a package to the building he'd parked in front of. As he got to the door of the building however he was suddenly surrounded by the four occupants of the vehicle, two of whom caught him by the arms to prevent him from entering the building.  One of the men began asking him for his identification. He told them it was on the side of the truck at which point they began to pull him over to the truck to get it. Mr. Grays told them that he had mail to deliver, and stood there stiffly (IMO) trying to figure out what was going on. That's when things got ugly. The two men began to manhandle Mr. Grays; as you can see in the video below, they look like small (offensive? defensive?) tackles hanging on to a big burly quarterback who is driving down the field dragging them along with him. LOL (I'm not good with football allegories!)

So now we've got them trying to bully him into doing something to justify the way they're treating him; sort of like trying to create a crime to justify the punishment already being meted out! You can see around 44 seconds into the video one of them is screaming in his face "Stop resisting!" to which he replies "I'm not resisting! Now, the one behind him is handcuffing him,  so how is he resisting? And guess what the initial charge was reported to be for this incident? You got it, resisting arrest! (Here's the article, read the 10th paragraph!)

So this article is the latest I found on the case. It appears that when an officer is caught on camera beating a poor kid, or even killing someone,  the force rushes to defend by saying the officer was just following his training, but do something stupid (as they did in this case) and the department is going to do something to make it appear that they are punishing the officers! The lieutenant who supervised the 'arrest' has been stripped of duty; they took his gun and badge, and put him on "modified desk duty". (I think that means he's answering phones or something like that.) But what about the rest of them? Especially the two that swung him around like he was a Maypole or something, all the while trying to bully him into lashing out so they could charge him with assault on a police officer? What happens to them?

IMO, this will probably be the last we hear about this case. No one was hurt, so the boys in blue are just going to wait until it's forgotten, and that lieutenant will be right back on the street. Let's just hope he's learned something while he's gone!

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