BEATING WRONG; DRUGS ARE TOO

Police officers must conduct themselves with professional discipline
and restraint. If they don't, they should be punished.

We don't know if Jadell Gilyard was mistreated, but we are having a
hard time working up much sympathy for him.

Gilyard is the 24-year-old habitual felony drug offender who claims
he was beaten after being arrested and handcuffed by Fort Myers police Aug. 31.

He certainly looked awful after the incident, but the police say it
was his own fault for hanging on too dearly to his drugs while they
took him down to the ground to cuff him. They say he failed to break
his fall, therefore landed face-first. Who knows? The four officers,
Bradley J.E. Ades, Charles Dickerson, Eric Gutridge and Joseph
Schwartz, were cleared after a rather perfunctory investigation by
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, requested by police Chief
Hilton Daniels.

Gilyard's attorney, Scot Goldberg of Fort Myers, says he has perhaps
five witnesses who will confirm Gilyard's version of events. Neither
they, nor Gilyard, nor the four officers were interviewed by the FDLE
- -- which says it is willing to talk to them. It's curious that this
investigation can't be moved along any further than that. Goldberg
says he will sue the city, the department and the four officers for
violating Gilyard's civil rights.

No Sympathy

If Gilyard was mistreated, if he was struck unnecessarily while
handcuffed, that's wrong.

Police officers must conduct themselves with professional discipline
and restraint. If they don't, they should be punished. Such cases are
especially inflammatory when the police are white and the suspect black.

If he and his attorney have credible witnesses to police misconduct,
bring them forward. They will be needed, because as a convicted drug
dealer, Gilyard is not a compelling witness.

But we would say to Gilyard: If you choose to sell drugs for a
living, if it is your chosen profession to contribute to the
deterioration of society and your own community in particular; if you
take money for adding to the terrible burdens of addiction, disease,
child- and spouse- abuse, of crime, violence and fear; if you have
taken streets and neighborhoods away from decent people who struggle
to raise their children or live out their declining years in peace
and who must now live in fear of you and people like you--well, sir,
don't come knocking on our door looking for sympathy, even if you were abused.

You'll get your day in court, as you should, but you won't deserve
anybody's sympathy.

Rough Trade

A relative of yours complains that you are not a violent man as
attested to by the lack of violence reported in your previous
arrests. That might be amusing if you were a chronic thief, but you
sell drugs. That means, in effect, that you kill people. That's
violent enough for us.

Besides, drug dealing is a dangerous profession. A dealer can get
killed by a competitor, by a dissatisfied or greedy customer, by the
infuriated parent of a kid he sold drugs to, even by the drugs
themselves if he uses. He also can get roughed up by cops. It comes
with the job, or as a saying has it, "Don't get in the water if you
don't want to get wet."

Nevertheless, we realize that mistreatment of black suspects in the
custody of white police is a very serious matter for all of us, even
when the suspect is a disreputable man. A reasonable level of trust
is needed to control crime effectively, and police restraint is
something that can be lost completely if standards aren't upheld.

This case needs a thorough investigation. But please don't let us
hear Jadell Gilyard singing the blues.