IN AMERICA / By BOB HERBERT

        Protesting Police Behavior
 

            On Monday morning I asked former Mayor David Dinkins if he was going downtown just to
            demonstrate, or to commit an act of civil disobedience.

        "The latter," he said.

        "So you plan to get arrested."

        "That's the idea," he said.

        Less than an hour later, bundled up against the cold and a strong wind blowing through the courthouse
        complex in lower Manhattan, Mr. Dinkins joined Representative Charles Rangel, Representative
        Gregory Meeks, a couple of City Council members, the Rev. Al Sharpton and others to protest the
        killing of Amadou Diallo and a pattern of police misbehavior that has angered and frightened many New
        Yorkers.

        They gathered outside the Supreme Court Building at 60 Centre Street. Buffeted by the wind and
        standing in inch-deep slush, they spoke quietly to reporters about their concerns.

        Mr. Dinkins said he believed that under Rudolph Giuliani the Police Department had come "dangerously
        close to adopting the philosophy that the ends justify the means."

        He cited as an example the tens of thousands of people, most of them black or Hispanic, who are
        stopped and searched illegally by police officers. He said: "If the police roust 10 people and find
        something on one of them, they think that justifies abusing the rights of the other nine. It doesn't."

        Mr. Rangel, usually brassy and quick with a quip, seemed more thoughtful and restrained on Monday.
        He said he would like to hear the "decent men and women of the Police Department, who are in the vast
        majority, shatter the blue wall of silence" and speak out against misconduct.

        "I want to make a special appeal," said Mr. Rangel, "to the tens of thousands of courageous police
        officers who work hard on our behalf every day not to allow this contamination of their department by
        the few. When these good officers see wrongdoing, we need to hear them say that they won't tolerate it."

        Surrounded by a crowd of reporters and photographers, the protesters made the short walk from the
        Supreme Court building to Police Headquarters, where they had to work hard at getting arrested. The
        Giuliani administration clearly saw the protest as an embarrassment. Administration officials seemed
        uncertain about how to respond.

        The protesters linked arms and blocked the entrance to Police Headquarters. There they stayed in the
        bitter cold for the better part of an hour. Mr. Sharpton, clearly exasperated, reached for a microphone
        and, in effect, demanded to be arrested. Finally the protesters entered Police Headquarters, refused to
        leave, and were arrested.

        A few minutes later they were led out of the building in small groups and taken to the Seventh Precinct
        stationhouse.

        "That's pretty heavy," said a reporter as the 71-year-old Mr. Dinkins, his hands cuffed behind his back,
        was led away with Mr. Rangel and Mr. Sharpton, who were also in handcuffs.

        If Mayor Giuliani understood any aspect of what was going on, including the depth of genuine emotion
        behind the protest, he didn't let on. He told reporters: "This is a great publicity stunt -- can't you figure it
        out? It's a publicity stunt, and you are, as usual, sucked into it."

        The Daily News said in an article that Mr. Giuliani had met with the paper's editorial board and
        asserted, in the paper's words, that "the biggest beef New Yorkers have with the cops isn't that they're
        brutal -- it's that they're rude."

        Ah, yes. That must be it. The cops are rude. It was awfully rude to turn Abner Louima upside down and
        shove a wooden cylinder so deep into his rectum he almost died. That was very rude. And it was ruder
        still to corner Amadou Diallo and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot until he was very, very
        dead. That was really rude.

        And Lani Soto, a Brooklyn high school student whom I interviewed a few weeks ago, thought it was
        quite rude when a uniformed officer pushed her up against the doors of a subway train and got his kicks
        fondling her sexually. And John Padilla, who had done nothing wrong, thought it was rude for a police
        officer to slam him face-first to the sidewalk with such force he was blinded in one eye.

        Rude.

        This Mayor will never get it. Which is why it's so important for other New Yorkers to take up the slack.