Which came first?

The recent incidents of police brutality against black people and retaliatory killings of innocent white policemen in Dallas and elsewhere raise the question: "Which came first?" There is no excuse for either of these misdeeds. There is no doubt many black people disobey commands of police when they are stopped. This behavior is as much due to mistrust of, and loss of respect for, the police for the way they behaved with them, as failure of their parents to teach them to obey the law.

Some years ago, when I (who have brown skin) was driving my new Audi on Kingshighway with my wife and little boy, a police officer pulled me over. After he examined my driver's license, etc., I asked him why he had stopped me. Since he had no valid cause to pull me over, he asked me to step outside. He asked me why there was a small orange-colored sticker at the corner of the license plate. I said that perhaps the security guards of the hospital put it there to identify the car as that of an employee. After unnecessarily interrogating me for 15 minutes, he let me go.

Though the then-chief of police was my neighbor and I knew him well, I did not take up this matter with him lest I embarrass him. However, my respect for the Cape Girardeau police went one notch down. Then I realized why some black people behave the way they do with the policemen.

K.P.S. KAMATH, Cape Girardeau