It takes a special sort of fellow to wrap himself up in authority in order to beat the daylights out of another guy.  But what if it’s a woman?

From the Gothamist :

Ann Stanczyk, 49, was walking her terrier Psotka (Polish for prankster) near her home in Rockaway Beach on the Friday after Thanksgiving when two NYPD officers took a special interest in her dog’s business. She claims that two cops approached her and ordered her to scoop poop that wasn’t Psotka’s, and after she begrudgingly complied, they violently arrested her for talking back.

Nobody likes to step in doggy doo.  But come on.

When the cops told Stanczyk to clean up the poop, she did, even though she says it wasn’t the by-product of her dog.  Hers, she said, only peed.  For dog owners, this explanation is likely more fascinating than it is for others.

But what happened afterward has nothing to do with pet ownership.

“I started to scream, ‘My dog! My dog!'” explains Stanczyk. “They punch me in my face. They punch me in my breast. They punch me in my stomach.” It’s also unclear if the poop was entered into evidence.

According to court papers obtained by the News, Stanczyk was accused of “causing a ruckus by yelling at the officers to leave her alone.”

Here’s the rub, regardless of whether Stanczyk was “causing a ruckus,” and who wouldn’t as the police were beating you, or whether they initiated the tuning up to teach her a lesson in public health, what sort of cops felt compelled to do this to this woman?

The obvious presumption that is that Stanczyk failed to demonstrate due respect for the officers’ authoritah, contempt of cop as it’s known.  We certainly can’t have woman denying that their dog pooped when police think otherwise.  Nor can we have women complaining to officers that the have fallen short of that “protect and serve” stuff written across the side of cruisers.  That could seriously impair their branding, and diminish public respect for the police. It’s no longer about dog poop, but about sustaining our way of life.

So if she spoke to the officers in a somewhat disrespectful tone, regardless of the tone used by the officers to tell her to shut up and do as she’s told, one can easily see why the officers felt constrained to take action to assure that their shields were respected and the quiet and peace of Rockaway Beach was restored.

But what kind of man beats a woman like this?  Tell us, Officers Shaun Grossweiler and Richard DeMartino.  What kind of man beats a woman like this?

The “us vs. them” mentality that sustains a police officers ability to overcome the limitations of normalcy and human restraint and act against another person without remorse requires them to dehumanize others.  There is no way that a normal person can simply beat another, inflict this sort of injury with his hands, without seeing that other person as something less than human.

While we often ignore it, or excuse it, when the person beaten is described as some heinous criminal, it cannot be rationalized when it’s a woman, about whom the worst one can claim is that she failed to scoop poop.  It is not acceptable, excusable, explainable.  This is the product of a sick mind.

And the  complaint against her was ACD’d.  You might think this is because she hadn’t suffered enough to deserve an outright dismissal, but the underlying reason is more likely that an ACD is not considered a termination in favor of the accused, just in case she might want to sue for her beating.