Before anyone has a chance to get upset over my comment about an
attitude adjustment, let me expand on that.
In an emergency situation, in which the police are sure that they are
in the right, intimidation may be appropriate because it achieves the
most effective results. One normally would not challenge police
personnel in an emergency situation, anyway.
This situation was clearly not an emergency. If it had been, in
response to "were you called in," the police involved could have
simply said "yes, this is an emergency". Even if it had not been an
emergency, they could have said "yes, we were" or "we are on patrol
duty".
I bet that nobody on the list would have even mentioned it if the cops
had had the presence of mind to respond as above. The way they
handled it, several people perceived the situation as the cops trying
to bully their way through into somewhere they shouldn't have been --
even if they really were authorized to be there.
--
john@idsfa.net John Stimson
http://www.idsfa.net/~john/ HMC Physics '94
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