Another proportional response from police

[richlevy]

From here

Assuming that the account is true, it is 'disorderly conduct' to say something that a police officer doesn't like to hear.

Pepin Tuma, a 33-year-old gay man, was discussing the recent arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates with a few friends as they walked to Cobalt on July 26. At some point in the pre-bar jaunt, the Washington Blade reports, Tuma loudly condemned the alleged bigotry in the case in a sing-song voice: “I hate the police!” he declared. “I hate the police!”
A D.C. police officer, Tuma says, responded with some hate-speech of his own—and a swift arrest. Second District Officer J. Culp, Tuma says, “charged 40-50 feet” toward him, “pushed him against a transformer box,” arrested him, then told him to “shut up, faggot.”

I'm not sure if he was being stupid or just testing the state of the Constitution. If the latter, then the Constitution isn't looking so good.

Tuma’s lawyer friends, too, are committed to fighting the charge:

D.C. attorney Luke Platzer, one of Tuma’s two friends to witness the arrest, said he and a second friend, attorney Dave Stetson, were approached by a D.C. police sergeant shortly after police drove Tuma to the station to process his arrest. Platzer said the sergeant, whose last name is Geer, told them he observed Tuma attempting to “resist” arrest in a disorderly way and asked them if they would give a statement confirming his observation.
“We said, ‘No, we did not see that at all,’” Platzer told the Blade. “We thought he was trying to trick us into saying that there was physical resistance by Pepin to the arrest. That is not true.”

I've heard defenses of the police in the Gates case about how it was necessary to get him out of the house for his own protection or how it was necessary to maintain authority during a potential break-in. Neither of those conditions apply in this case.

Tuma’s arrest, the Blade reports, is currently being investigated on the orders of D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

Too right. Part of the reason that decent cops have so much difficulty with the public is that the public has experiences like this. Assuming Pepin wasn't waving a weapon, there was no sufficient provocation for a confrontation or arrest.