When will cops stop acting disorderly?

A black thing? A racial-profiling thing? A racist thing?

Those are the motivations most often proffered in the saga of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. vs. the Cambridge police. What other possible explanations are there for a white officer stopping a 58-year-old black man with a cane, in the heinous act of trying to open the door of his own house? But it wasn't a black thing. Or a racial-profiling thing. Or a racist thing.

It was a cop thing.

It was a thing motivated by the very nature of many police officers - more thin-skinned than a supermodel, filled with self-pity and feelings of persecution over a perceived lack of appreciation, poised to disturb the peace rather than try at all costs to keep it because of their innate aggressiveness and thirst for action, disdainful of the public regardless of race and color and creed.

They are cops. And if you have dealt with a cop in your lifetime, you know their propensity, the nervousness you feel in even approaching one for a traffic direction and the look given in return, as if you have just interrupted the study of the Talmud. You know that the interaction has too many times been unpleasant, unless you are some law and order right-wing radio show snake-oil salesman crafting your beliefs to the reactionary masses who would like to change the name of the tooth fairy to the tooth don't-ask-don't-tell.

Has there been racial profiling in the past? Of course there has. But something new has taken hold in the last decade to make police officers equal-opportunity offenders. Part of it is the post 9/11 reign of tyranny enacted by Bush-Cheney, in which every American, except for those meeting the twin requisites of zealous nationalism and avoidance of military service, became a would-be terrorist. Which empowered law enforcement officials more than ever before and reduced the rights of American citizens more than ever before.

There is also the stark truth that inferior officers are being hired by police departments all over the country because of a lack of qualified applicants. A two-year college degree was once required by some departments, but not anymore. So-called "minor" offenses such as using cocaine, or even past gang activity in the case of one department, are no longer a bar to admission. What happens when you have an officer on the street with no college education, a criminal record, and a ninth-grade reading level? Let's just agree that deductive reasoning, never a well-stocked commodity in police departments anyway, has taken another constitutional blow.

Can cops be heroic? More than any other profession. Was their bravery on 9/11, knowing they were going to die in the service of saving others, the greatest act of self-sacrifice ever on American soil? Yes. Is it true they take their lives into their hands every day? I know this can happen, having written in Vanity Fair about the cold-blooded murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner by Mumia Abu-Jamal during an ostensibly routine traffic stop in 1981, the only mercy in the case that the ego-crazed Abu-Jamal has slid into irrelevance. No city in the country had more officers killed in the line of duty in 2008 than Philadelphia, a tragic distinction. There are good cops, great cops, understanding cops, kind cops.

But patrol officers often look for the slightest excuse to be confrontational, surly, and menacing when dealing with the public in situations that are obviously minor (because despite what cops say, many situations are obviously minor). Instead of looking to defuse, they look to detonate. Instead of remembering they are servants of the public, they believe that the public is in servanthood to them. They like to intimidate; it is a form of job satisfaction.

In a piece in the NYU Annual Survey of American Law in 2008, author Jeremy Lacks quoted that ultimate commonsense criminologist, Detective Jimmy McNulty in the highly praised HBO series The Wire: "The patrolling officer on his beat is the one true dictatorship in America."

In keeping with McNulty wisdom, no charge in American jurisprudence is more abused than disorderly conduct, which predictably was the charge applied against Gates during the July 16 dispute before it was dropped. It's not really a charge, but what Los Angeles criminal attorney Stephen Rodriguez described on his Web site as a catch-all "to give police officers a way to make an arrest when they get annoyed with a person's behavior."

In Philadelphia in 2003, because of the rising trend of lawsuits and complaints against officers for indiscriminately resorting to it, then-Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson had no choice but to issue a terse memo to all commanders. "It appears that a significant number of officers are either intentionally or inadvertently misusing this statute to arrest belligerent or argumentative persons they encounter on patrol," the memo said. "As commanders, it is your responsibility to ensure that the citations issued under your command are lawful and fully supported with sufficient probable cause." In other words, cut the crap.

Several months later in December of 2003, a scathing report on the department by the city's Integrity and Accountability Office, authored by Ellen Green-Ceisler, now a Common Pleas Court judge, concluded among a slew of findings that officers were often rude, unprofessional, and verbally abusive to citizens.

There is no doubt that the job of the line officer is often miserable, dealing with a clientele that is often miserable, pining away in work conditions that are often miserable, buried in often miserable paperwork and often miserable bureaucratic and political protocol as well as often miserable defense attorneys and often miserable judges. It creates what Philadelphia lawyer Alan Yatvin, who has specialized in police-misconduct litigation for 26 years, calls an "us against them mentality." And it is not only blacks that feel the brunt.

I am a 54-year-old white man. I am 5-feet-6 and only slightly more physically menacing than Danny DeVito. Roughly 15 years ago, I was walking to my home in Chestnut Hill when I saw a patrol car following me. As I approached the pathway to my front door, I saw the car pull up to the curb. I had no idea why, until the officer got out and demanded to see my identification. It became clear that he thought, without any justification, I was a would-be burglar, except perhaps for the leather jacket I was wearing, which I admit in Chestnut Hill does stand out in a place still favoring corsets and frock coats. Instead of standing up for my rights, which we as Americans still have, I copped out, a conciliatory choirboy. Frankly, I should have done what Gates did. I should have become indignant, and the cop should have said what I don't think has ever been said by a patrol officer in history - "I'm sorry." His actions forever bothered me.

Roughly 15 years later, I was at the gulag of American life, the airport, where the aphrodisiac of authoritarianism extends not simply to law enforcement but to gate agents, who may be even nastier. When I caught one from US Airways blatantly lying about the planned departure of a plane that was already two hours late, I challenged her. She treated me as if she was the one paying for my services when, stupid me, I thought it was the other way around. I refused to let it go, which resulted in the hotline phone call. Three law enforcement officials showed up. They asked to see my ID, which I reluctantly gave to them. They asked what I did for a living. "Don't I have any rights?" I asked, including the right to complain about despicable service that I was paying for. He looked at me with those burning eyes of the post 9/11 era. "Not anymore, you have no rights," he said. Case closed.

Perhaps the most recent proof of cops' acting with disregard for the color line lies right here in Philadelphia, with the stunning revelation by Daily News reporter Dave Davies just 13 days ago of the conduct of an officer named Alberto Lopez Sr.

A year ago, Lopez's son had rear-ended another car, and according to the Daily News account, he did what the good son of a police officer apparently does - ran to his daddy on duty and cried foul even though he was the one who initiated the accident. Father and son Lopez swung immediately into action. In an admittedly fine bit of police work, they found the other car involved in the accident at a Lukoil convenience store in the Northeast at 3 in the morning. They went inside, whereupon Father Lopez took out his gun and pushed it into the neck of one of the occupants of the car that son Lopez had hit, a 20-year-old white woman named Agnes Lawless.

After already achieving the daily double of being dangerous and violent, Father Lopez hit the trifecta by apparently suggesting to the clerk of the store that he should do himself a favor and get rid of the tapes that are a routine feature of convenience stores. The clerk, to his credit, shook off the obvious blackmail; the tape was given to the Internal Affairs Bureau. Then the real fun started.

A 5-year-old would have recognized in 10 seconds of watching the tape that Lopez should have been dismissed from the force. But the byzantine police disciplinary procedure makes a Rube Goldberg illustration look simpleminded.

Internal Affairs indeed concluded that Lopez had pressed a gun against Lawless' neck. But Lopez was never suspended and still spent roughly seven months on full duty until the Daily News story on July 20. Afterward, the high command of the department, shamed into action, took the bold step of removing him from street duty. Which means he is still ostensibly being paid. Which means his case won't have a departmental hearing until this month to decide further action. Which means Commissioner Charles Ramsey will still have the ultimate decision. Which means that whatever decision there is against Lopez, the case can be taken to arbitration. Which means more ridiculous and unnecessary delay. Which means that whatever you do out there, don't let your car be fender-bendered by the son of a cop on street duty unless you want to run the risk of being killed by the father (guns do accidentally go off).

Which means that whatever race and color you are, nothing will ever change unless police departments, not just in Philadelphia but around the country, start bouncing officers who wield their power on an innocent public, whether it's a gun to the neck or a reckless-conduct charge because of the outrageousness of an American citizen to point out that their rights are being violated. But I am not naïve. It will never happen, because if a cop can't harass the public and come back to the precinct with a story of testosterone to tell, then what's the payoff?