My experience with the Allentown, PA PD: 1968: There was a store

[old mark]

on the main street - in the downtown area - that sold stuff aimed at young people of the time. English style clothes, odd decorations, etc, and handmade jewelery.
I stopped to speak with a high school friend - I was on leave from the Army - and my wife went to the shop too see if a friend who worked there could meet us after work. By the time she came back out, my friend and I along with 20 to 30 young people standing around the sidewalk had been arrested. We all got taken to the police station and searched, and taken immediately to court where we were all charged with loitering. After a half hour or so, all charges were dismissed, but we had been seriously harrassed, and I was interested to recall that groups of folks older than all of us who had been arrested were told bu the police to move away and they were left watching it all happen. The group was mainly white, some black, and were just standing on the public sidewalk talking.

I have never forgotten this, and have hated that town since, even though I was born there and lived much of my life there till adulthood.

Too many police are simply thugs.

mark

[onethatcares]

1. at least it wasn't Reading.

hell, we didn't even have shops that catered to young people back then. We had to go to King of Prussia.

[old mark]

6. IIRC, Reading in '68 had neo Nazis, several competing outlaw

biker gangs and a Black Panther chapter. Another good place to be away from.

I live right outside of Reading now.

mark

[yellowcanine]

7. Allentown and Reading are in the "Alabama" part of Pennsylvania.

[old mark]

9. Actually, there are several parts both north and south of Reading

that are pretty scarey - the rusted out cars, the kind of inbred looking people.....
I have been living around here for about 50 years, and there are several areas I won't go to.


mark

[onethatcares]

10. I grew up in Greenfields, north of Glenside

going back for a two day vacation treat this weekend. I can't explain how excited I am about it.:sarcasm: If it wasn't my folks 60th,
I'd stay here in sunny Floriduh and take a few days off. :hi:

[old mark]

14. Then you already KNOW.......

:hide:


(Some people criticise me for carrying a gun.....)
mark

[onethatcares]

15. jeeez, my the first house I bought was on

Gordon St. My wife lived on Front St. Both 500 blocks, Y carumba???? My oh my, how things have changed.

My dad told me not to go down to that area when I visit. He said a white guy in a new car (rental) would either be shot by the gangs or pulled over by the police thinking I was trying to buy drugs.

[old mark]

16. I used to walk from near 10th and Gordon to 4th and Allen to grade school

for 6 years. I would never walk in most of those areas at all now - last time I was near one of my old CCHS hangouts, there was a cop stepping on a guys neck in the middle of Chew street while cuffing him. That was nearly 18 years ago, and I'm sure it's worse.
Sad to think this will be someone's "good old days" and how much worse will it get....

mark

[elleng]

2. sorry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K62DdoFoNeg

[zbird]

3. I grew up there too.

Couldn't wait to leave either. Was that at C. Leslie Smith?

[old mark]

5. Exactly. I used to work there making jewelery for a while, our friend, Gordon,

worked in the upstairs store, the name of which escapes me now.
They were very big on harrassing gays in that town as well, IIRC, and just anyone they didn't like the looks of.

mark

[starroute]

4. There was a lot of anti-hippie police activity then

I remember how in the spring of 1969 the Boston cops decided they weren't going to let anybody walk or sit on the grass in the Boston Common. There'd been too many hippies frolicking in the park and they were trying to discourage them.

I found this out when I went there with a book and started looking for a shady place to read. When I found out the cops weren't letting people sit on the grass, I thought at first that maybe they were honestly worried about it getting trampled, so I found a convenient tree root next to the path and sat down on that.

No good. A cop came along. "You can't sit on the grass." "But I'm not on the grass." "You still can't sit there." So I took my book and went elsewhere.

Funny thing, though. A couple of months later, when I'd just gotten married, my husband and I went to the Boston Common together one weekend and there were no hippies there at all. No cops either. Just lots of ordinary-looking middle-class people sitting on the grass and doing ordinary Saturday-in-the part types of things.

It was kind of surreal.

Finally, we found a couple or three hippie types just standing around. "Hey, man, where *is* everyone?" "Oh, everybody but us went to that big music festival they're having over in Woodstock." "So, no hippies means no cops harassing people, huh?" "Yeah, funny about that."

The late 60's were a pretty strange time -- and you could learn a lot about what it was like to be singled out purely on the basis of your appearance.

[csziggy]

11. I wonder if the divide between police supporters and non-supporters here

Is partly that "hippy vs pigs" legacy? I know I am wary because of my old hippy wannabe/pot smoking days, but then there is the dichotomy of trusting cops because of my white, semi-privileged family background (we didn't have a lot of money but came from a "good family" with lots of connections) that brought me up to expect deferential treatment from cops. So I kind of ride the fence and can see that cops misuse their power but expect and hope that they will do their jobs correctly.

Is there that kind of divide here? Are the people who are anti-cops either from a minority that has been mistreated or former pot smokers who have that touch of paranoia? And the people who are pro-cops ones who never had that kind of experience or expectation from cops?

[asdjrocky]

8. I have been arrested for calling a cop an asshole.

Why did I call him an asshole? Because he was a very big asshole who had felt up my girlfriend while doing an unwarranted search on us. I have been "taken in for questioning" on charges I was completely innocent on and I was returned home bruised, beaten and brutalized. I've been arrested for doing nothing, and I've been arrested for simply expressing my 1st Amendment right.

I could go on, but I'd need my own post. There's a reason we started calling them pigs. They are even worse now then they were in the 60s and 70s.

[Karenina]

12. They're roid-raged and militarized now.

:scared:

[EFerrari]

13. The day I moved to Santa Monica, I walked my dog out to the beach

after unloading what I needed for the night. I wasn't exactly dressed for company but wanted to stretch after driving all those miles with my dog in the back seat.

I was LOOKING at the beach and a cop comes up to me to ask for my ID. I told him, I'd just gotten into town that day. He asked me if I really lived there and for a physical address.

Wtf, my dog was on a leash, I wasn't high and it was 5pm on a Saturday afternoon. At most, you could arrest me for being rumpled and a little sweaty after driving for four hours.

Later I find out that the Santa Monica PD are actually really good -- except they apparently stop people who look like they don't "belong" there.

We really do have a problem.