by Jay A. McCalla

Suppose I told you that, during volatile times, there was a city where tens of thousands came to protest, picket and parade and not one soul got arrested. Sounds a wee bit utopian, doesn't it ?

Well, that was us during the Democratic National Convention.

Zones for protests were established and respected. Apparently, cops (a British abbreviation for Constable on Patrol) coordinated neatly and sympathetically with a huge range of visitors with a wide variety of temperaments.

This official civility and restraint was not guaranteed. Our police have a history of heavy-handedness that dates back to when the police commissioner stripped Black Panthers naked on a public street. Many who are alive today will tell you how city police beat them in front of 21st Street and the Parkway as they demonstrated for a better education.

It was former Police Commissioner John Timoney who disclosed his department’s venerated practice of deliberately giving “rough rides” in the rear of police vans for the purpose of injuring those being transported.

Almost ludicrously, when we hosted the Republican National Committee in 2000, our “boys in blue” were violating civil liberties almost as a matter of course. Vividly, I recall platoons of passive puppeteers being hauled to the pokey.

This is a police force that currently conducts 20,000 “stop and frisks” (over and above regular pedestrian stops) monthly. Generally speaking, those 20,000 stops lack a constitutional basis.

Even casual observers knew that over-reaction by our force, which did not require high school diplomas until Mayor Rendell, was the one thing that would land us in Global Public Relations Hell.

There was reason to raise an eyebrow when the city purchased extra insurance to cover abuse and civil liberty violation lawsuits. Given that the city is self-insured and such policies are rare, some feared leeway was being created for bad behavior.

Given the extraordinary pressures, our history of problematic police behavior and insurance policies that render abuse “cost free,” the table was set for tumult. But, leadership matters, and I surmise it was provided by Mayor Jim Kenney. Zero arrests is no accident.

Kenney rose to this perilous occasion of global vulnerability with a greater “sense of self” than other mayors under a similar spotlight. To some, it seemed Mayor Nutter was seduced by Homeland Security during the Papal Visit, allowing armored troop carriers on our streets. Our first black mayor, Wilson Goode, deferred all operational authority to his subordinates during the MOVE debacle.

Kenney stayed in charge and that matters.