‘Courtesy’ in a Climate Where Mercy Withers

It was what one cop on a police-oriented website called “the gentlest” of summonses: a ticket for driving with a defective headlight, one that could be wiped out by having the problem corrected within 24 hours.

It turned into a story of considerably greater duration because of those directly involved—most notably the mother of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died in mid-July after a confrontation with cops over allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes that led to his being placed in an apparent chokehold—and what looms over it, including the Bronx ticket-fixing scandal and two forces in New York political life which have been known to fan the flames of controversy: the New York Post (which broke the story) and the Rev. Al Sharpton.