Bayside, Queens Incident
In Season 4, Fancy and his wife were stopped at a traffic light and treated in a rough and possibly racist manner by two uniform cops in Bayside, Queens (The officers held them at gunpoint over a broken taillight until Fancy revealed his badge). The following day, Fancy called the officers in claiming that they had overreacted pulling them over and treating them in a manner as if they were suspects in an armed robbery. After questioning the officers, Fancy concluded that he and his wife were pulled over at gunpoint on the basis of their race alone. The senior officer, Szymanski, vehemently denied pulling them over on the basis of their race and claimed they did that to every suspect as a precaution. Angered, Fancy went to Captain Bass requesting that the Chief of Patrol transfer Officer Szymanski (the junior Officer McCaslin had been on the force 10 months and was situated in the passenger's seat of the squad car merely backing Szymanski) out of their predominantly Caucasian precinct of Bayside, Queens. Fancy figured that Szymanski would be forced to both "earn his money" and learn to better interact with African Americans working in a predominantly African American precinct. Fancy recommended that Szymanski go to a precinct located either in Harlem or Brooklyn North, causing Szymanski to be reassigned to a precinct in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Szymanski then came to Fancy furious over having been reassigned to a "toilet" claiming that Fancy wrongfully abused his power which Fancy purposefully admitted to doing (Fancy reiterates Szymanski's reason for the pullover "When you pull someone over, no telling who you're dealing with"). Captain Bass then came to Fancy recommending that putting Szymanski in Bedford-Stuyvesant was a bad idea. Bass states that putting a bigoted police officer in a problematic and predominantly African American precinct would only add to that community's problems compromising the safety of innocent citizens there. Fancy compromised and transferred Szymanski into the 15th precinct with a black partner. Szymanski later faced a false accusation of robbing a black drug dealer and then fired five shots into a Black undercover officer while at the 15th. Fancy nevertheless came through clearing Szymanski of both problems after hearing Szymanski's side of both situations leading to a truce between the two.
Read more about this topic: Arthur Fancy
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