by Richard Lacayo

About the author: Richard Lacayo is a senior writer for Time magazine.

Police brutality works only in the dark. The sadistic assault on Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was allegedly sodomized with a toilet-plunger handle by New York City police [in August 1997], was supposed to be confined to a station-house bathroom. But now that the attack is a public outrage—his injuries took him to the hospital, and from there to newspaper front pages—much more is at stake than just the reputation of Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct, where four officers face charges. All around the country, the aggressive, “zero tolerance” policing strategy—which has contributed to New York’s plummeting crime rate and is being imitated in other cities—is now getting a second look...