Even if Owens wasn't a fellow officer, the fact is they beat him badly enough that he had to go on disability when he had nothing to do with the car theft or the accident and was only trying to help. The fact that they then went on to beat his son, who also had nothing to do with it, shows a tendency for vicious overreaction and brutality without first determining who the innocent and guilty parties are. Even if he did fail to identify himself, or they failed to hear it, he'd done nothing wrong and nothing like this should have ever happened to him or his son.

If anyone should understand the confusion that can occur in the "heat of the moment," it would be a 10-year police veteran. He of all people should know how they feel. Instead he's suing for $1 million on the claim that Providence police are racist. This type of thing can happen to someone who isn't walking around with his pants sagging, isn't wearing a highly suspicious hoodie and oh-by-the-way is a cop. Just like black off-duty NYPD officers who say they get profiled, harassed, and assaulted too. What it is that any other black person can do? How nice and polite and deferential and compliant and respectable do they have to be to prevent this kind of thing from happening to them also?

Or perhaps, it's not up to them. It's up to the standards of justice we train for and expect from our police forces—particularly in the "heat of the moment."