The NYPD is Color Blind...

Dooooonnnn'ttttt Yoooouuuu Beellliiiivveeee IT!

In case you haven't heard last Sunday's Puerto Rican parade was marred by the wholesale arrests of hundreds of Latino people, mostly young males. The excuse given by the NYPD was that they were preventing members of the Latin Kings, a Latino street gang, from breaking into the parade. In the years preceding this parade the Kings had been licenced to march, but this year they were banned from the parade by Mayor Bloomberg whom said later through a City Hall spokesman, "[Bloomberg] doesn't think it appropriate for a criminal enterprise to march in the parade...Gangs commit crimes. They murder people."

But according to parade officials, the Kings posed no threat during the parade. This did not stop the police from rounding up Latinos in bunches. In Gonzales' article he describes the arrest of one such kid, son of a retired Fire Fighter and transit officer, Nick Nieves:

"Nieves [the kid] says he and a 15-year-old friend, Jasmine Rodriguez, were enjoying Sunday's parade and crossing Fifth Ave. about 2 p.m. behind a large crowd.

"The police directed us to go toward Madison Ave.," Nieves said. "We were behind a big group of people who all had yellow shirts."

"Police officials have said the Latin Kings members were wearing gold and black, the gang's colors.

"Nieves was wearing a white shirt with a Puerto Rican flag and blue shorts. The yellow shirts worn by the group of strangers in front of him were promotion shirts for Def Jam records, he said, and none of them had made any attempt to break into the parade.

"Suddenly cops descended on the group from all sides and began handcuffing and photographing everyone.

""They let my friend go because she was 15," he said. "But they took me and about 20 others to the precinct [stationhouse]."

"Nieves said he was not allowed to make a phone call to his parents until 10 p.m. and was not arraigned until the next day.

"Because of all this, I missed my final exam in Spanish Monday morning," he said."

Personally, I hate parades. Maybe I hate them because I don't much like people and when you get too many together they can be worse then Hamas. The only one I really celebrate is St. Patrick's Day, and I do that in the traditional Irish fashion: sitting at a pub, drinking. But the idea of the NYPD rounding up Latinos willy-nilly makes my blood boil. Look I don't think the Kings should march either, and furthermore I think that Bloomberg should have just come out and given his reasons pre-parade rather than having the organizers weakly say that their applications were late. (I'd like to see them deny J. Lo, and Marc Anthony their places in the parade for that reason). But fighting crime based on what colors people wear or what shade of skin they are makes the "good guys" just as much tyrants as the gangs themselves. Also, it doesn't work. The city owes NY Latinos an apology for such poor behavior, because what sense does it make to allow for a Puerto Rican day parade if Puerto Ricans are too afraid to go?