Omar Rendon was a sergeant in the Marines, which is detailed so you realize that he was one of the good guys. You know, the brave heroes everybody talks about, who deserve our thanks.  And indeed, they do, and he does. And he is a good guy, which didn’t really help him much.

From the Daily News:

Omar Rendon, 25, a former Marine sergeant, said he was sitting in his Acura sedan in an Ulmer St. parking lot in College Point, Queens while on his lunch break last week, eating a Subway sandwich and watching “Wentworth” on his cell phone, when an unmarked blue van pulled alongside him.

Two men in plainclothes said, “Police! Get out of the car,” and reached in to unlock the door, he said. When Rendon — a handyman at the commercial complex, which features a movie theater and a Toys “R” Us — asked who they were, he said he was violently yanked out of the car. When he asked to see their I.D.s, one cop punched him in the face, he told The News.

This happened as the NYPD was being told to get back to work, start making cases again because the public doesn’t think well of the cops.  The cops who did this to Rendon were from the Organized Crime Control Bureau, which is dedicated to stopping people from eating Subway  sandwiches on their lunch hour in cars in Queens.  That’s why they use unmarked vans.

The cops rifled through Rendon’s pockets and handcuffed him. He was thrown in the back of the windowless van and locked inside a prisoner cage while the cops searched inside the car and trunk.

After all, anyone who would eat a sandwich in his car could also have drugs, and how else would these brave NYPD heroes find out but to toss the guy and search his car?

Of course, they didn’t find anything, so they cut him loose.  Among the things they didn’t know was that Omar Rendon had two brothers, both of whom were NYPD cops.  They make for a nice family portrait, right?

Rendon followed them and got a pic of the license plate of the unmarked van.  He reported them, which is infinitely easier to do for a guy whose brothers are cops.

Police sources said the plate number was traced to a leasing company in Connecticut that is used by the Queens Narcotics unit, and that that the department’s Organized Crime Control Bureau inspections unit is close to identifying the two plainclothes officers involved in the incident.

After all, it’s really hard and time-consuming to look at who signed out the van that day, that tour, so it takes a lot of investigating.  Not that it matters a whole lot.

The source said the incident is being investigated as police misconduct rather than a criminal offense.

Because two random guys with shields get to pull a guy out of car for eating a Subway sandwich, punch him, toss him, search his car, and that’s not considered criminal if it’s done in the name of law enforcement.

Rendon is now suing the police, even though he is on the list to become a cop.

Despite the incident, Rendon still wants to follow in the footsteps of his brothers in blue. “All my life I’ve served the community,” said Rendon who has participated in heavy fighting in Helmond Province, Afghanistan. “I don’t think (the two cops) represent the police department the right way.”

A bit of an underwhelming conclusion, under the circumstances.  What part of this incident makes Rendon uncertain about whether these cops “represent the police department the right way”?  The baseless seizure, the beating, the tossing, the searching?  Perhaps if they just didn’t punch him, the cops would have been better representatives?

This isn’t to diminish what happened to Rendon, by any stretch, but that had he not been a Marine veteran, the brother of two cops, a community-spirited person who is on the list to become a cop, and still wants to become one, what are the chances anyone would believe this happened?  Even with his background, being above reproach, the NYPD doesn’t see this as enough of a problem for prosecution.

I would expect the reaction to this story, aside from such wild speculation as Rendon fitting the description of someone who ate Subway sandwiches in his car plus was a drug dealer or gun runner, from those inclined to go down any path to find any explanation to rationalize police abuse, to resort to the last, worst excuse: one bad apple.  Or two.

The problem is that if these were two bad apple cops, then name them, shame them and prosecute them.  Instead, the NYPD is hiding behind the phony investigations excuse from outing the OCCB beaters, and then keeping this matter inside the department, where they may possibly lose a day or two of vacation and get a stern talking to about not beating up brothers of fellow cops.  Or not.

Of course, if you only have one brother who’s a cop, it won’t turn out as well for you.  Or if you don’t happen to be a war veteran with an unblemished record, in which case it will have been your fault no matter what.