Yesterday the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a federal suit alleging police racially profiled Leonardo Blair, a black New York Post reporter who said he was arrested and harassed for simply walking down the street with his fiancée. The same day, his bosses at the Post ran an editorial saying there was too much fuss made over racial profiling:

Anti-cop radicals [like] the New York Civil Liberties Union... won't be happy 'till every last cop is off the streets (and maybe behind bars)... If cops stand down, as critics demand, it'll be welcome back crime and chaos.

Blair wrote an account of his police incident for the Post in December.

After he was stopped and angrily asked if he spoke English, and after he threw back "No, no hablo ingles" and the officer briefly took him seriously, Blair was handcuffed and taken to a precinct house. There, he announced his affiliation with the Post, he said in a statement given to Editor & Publisher:

The only reason why I declared to these officers that I was a reporter for the New York Post, that I was a graduate of Columbia University, is because I wanted it to end. I should not have to pull on cards to be respected as an individual.

Saying he was with the Post proved to be sort of get-out-of-jail free card, he hinted in his writeup in the Post:

I unloaded: "I have a master's degree from Columbia University. I am a reporter for the New York Post. What do you mean this is not incarceration?"



The air froze. Officer Castillo kept writing, but I watched his face go flush.



"Now I understand what black people mean in this country when they talk about things like this," I said to Officer Reynolds.



"What do you mean? I am black, too," he said.



"That's what makes it so shameful," I said. "You stood there and watched him cuff me for no reason and you said nothing." He walked away.



At 9:04 p.m., 10 minutes after I was put in the cell, Officer Castillo let me out.



"Mr. Blair," he said. "You are free to go."

(Side note: Sheila, you totally should have tried this!)

The only charges brought against Blair by the police, making unreasonable noise and disobeying a lawful order, were dismissed by a judge.

The Post wears its pro-police bias as a badge of honor, and Blair's suit was, perhaps, an embarrassment. It's easy to imagine its editorial yesterday as something other than an accident, a way to cement the paper's relationship with the NYPD and rebuke its off-the-reservation reporter without breaking any labor laws.

Or it could just be another pro-police Post editorial. Not sure it even really matters.

[E&P, Post editorial, Post story]



(Photo by New York Post)