Walcott Pulls Strings To Avoid Ticket

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott got into a scuffle with the NYPD Thursday night when a car he was riding in was pulled over in Queens.

Walcott allegedly told the cops "You have no right to pull us over!" when the police stopped the car for what they say was a failure to use a turn signal.

Walcott identified himself as a former deputy mayor and current schools chancellor, asked for the badge numbers of the officers, then complained to NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly that the officers did not properly identify themselves.

The two police officers are now facing an Internal Affairs investigation for the incident.

For their part, officers say they did identify themselves when they pulled the car over and that Walcott was excessively difficult during the incident.

Couple of things here:

Heckuva way to start his schools stewardship as chancellor.

First he continues the PEP policies of shutting down schools, rubber stamping mayoral policies and NOT listening to students, parents, teachers or community members when they beg him to not close down their improving schools, then he gets stopped by the police for failure to use a turn signal, gets in the face of the cops, pulls rank to get out of a ticket and uses his power to retaliate against the cops who pulled him over.

But he says he's going to be a different kind of chancellor than Cathie Black - less about abusive power and privilege and more about responsiveness to the community.

Oh, please - this incident is emblematic of people in power in general ("You have no right to stop us!") and symbolic of the Bloomberg administration in particular.

Impunity for their behavior, a lack of civility when called on their shit and a vindictive need to retaliate against anybody who tries to hold them to the rules that the rest of us have to follow.

There needs to be an independent investigation of this incident - I do not trust Ray Kelly's Internal Affairs officers to fairly investigate an incident involving Mayor Bloomberg's high profile schools chancellor.