Law & Order in New York

Do these Law & Order episodes sound familiar to you? I'm sure I've seen them all myself:

- An SUV drives into a storefront, injuring several people

- A dead body is found in suitcase in a park in Yonkers

- A man is shot by live ammunition in civil war re-enactment

- A 21-year veteran police officer commits suicide after causing the death of a mentally ill man in Brooklyn who fell to his death after being tasered by police

You've seen these episodes, right?

Well, these aren't television episodes - these are actual events that were reported on the local news earlier this month in New York City. Maybe I've just been watching too much news on TV since I joined one of the 159,000 newly unemployed Americans last month. Or, maybe every night on the news is like another episode of NYPD Blue or Law & Order, and I just haven't been paying attention the past year. But it's all real.

And yesterday I saw an episode play out on a street corner in the heart of Brooklyn. It was mid-day and I was walking to the mall at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenue to buy groceries at the Pathmark. Waiting for the walk signal, I saw a black man chasing another, taller, better dressed black man on the sidewalk across the road from me. The smaller guy in the baseball cap grabbed the back of the other guy's sweater and tried to push him down. People were staring, and the big guy was yelling for the other to leave him alone. The little guy had a hard time taking down the larger man.

As I crossed the street, a hefty black woman headed toward the two who were scuffling. I couldn't tell who she was defending as she threw herself into the mix, yelling about "spraying" one of them. The guy on the ground was yelling to leave him alone, he didn't do nothin'. I wondered outloud, "Where are the cops?" To me, it looked like this guy was about to get beat up by the others. It appeared that maybe this guy had stolen something from the woman, and the little guy was helping her take him down.

When I got to the other side of the street, the smaller guy finally had the big guy on the ground and was emptying the victim's pockets. The woman was on him too, and she repeatedly threatened, "I'm goin' spray you. You know what dat is?" I felt sorry for the guy on the ground. I'm thinking that the pepper spray is about to come out and wondering if I need to call 911. Dozens of by-standers like myself stared on.

The big guy, arms pinned behind him, kept yelling for help, saying he'd done nothing. At this point, no one knew who the good guy was in this incident because no one had identified his or herself yet. I wasn't leaving until I knew - I kept waiting for the hand-cuffs to come out.

Momentarily, the loud-mouthed black woman with the bad grammar finally pulled out a pair of hand-cuffs. That's when I realized who the cops were in the scene, and I turned and walked away.

Five minutes later, while grocery shopping in the Pathmark, I saw an overweight guy shop-lift a Snapple off the shelf, saying to his friend, "You want sumthin' to drink?" He casually sauntered down the aisle with his drink. After a few sips, he put the lid back on, put the bottle on a different shelf, and they both walked nonchalantly out of the store.

I shook my head and kept on shopping.