When I wrote that the Baltimore police officers who arrested 7-year-old Gerard Mungo Jr. last year overreacted, I got a lot of testy e-mails from people telling me how wrong I was.
You know who you are, and I'm sure Officer Salvatore Rivieri would like to know who you are, too. He really needs your support.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, Rivieri got his 15 minutes of fame, although probably not in the way he might have planned. Actually, it's three minutes and 39 seconds worth of fame, courtesy of that Internet creation known as YouTube. With some cell phones now being video cameras, almost anybody, at any time, anywhere, and virtually any incident might end up on YouTube.
Rivieri had no idea that someone with a cell phone camera recorded his encounter last summer with a 14-year-old skateboarder at the Inner Harbor. At least not until the very end of the video, when he's heard telling the person recording the incident "Is that camera on? I'd better not find out I'm on that camera."
But by then it was too late. In less than five minutes, Rivieri had already taken the action that led to his being suspended this week while the Baltimore Police Department's Internal Investigation Division determines what happened between the cop and the kid.
What happened, based on the YouTube video, is this:
Rivieri is seen telling a boy who appears to be about 14 or so that no skateboarding is allowed on the Inner Harbor promenade. The boy gives an answer that I found inaudible. But I could hear Rivieri as clear as a bell.
"Don't get defensive with me, son," Rivieri says. "You get defensive with me, you'll be spending some time in juvenile detention."
The boy says something else I couldn't understand. Rivieri answers.
"Don't give that attitude to me!" he shouts. "I'm not your father!"
The boy answers that he doesn't have a father, and that seems to enrage Rivieri even more.
"You give that attitude to me, I'll smack you upside your head!" shouts Rivieri, furious that the boy keeps calling him "dude." Within moments, Rivieri walks up to the boy, grabs him around the neck and wrests his skateboard from him. Rivieri throws the boy to the ground and appears to slap him one time across the face.
"I didn't do anything!" the boy protests.
"You disrespected me, this badge and my department!" Rivieri answers. "Obviously your parents didn't put a foot up your butt quite enough!"
