I’m no fan of the Philadelphia Police Department. I grew up in the working-class streets of South Philadelphia. As a kid, I got stopped by patrol cars on my way home late at night because I looked like someone who had done something wrong. Meaning that I looked Italian. We didn’t call it profiling in those days.

When I came out of the closet, police officers used to raid gay bars (if they didn’t fork over their payoffs on time) and harass queer men walking down the gayest street in town. Believe it or not, they could arrest us if it was after a certain hour and we were in groups of three or more. The first time I was caught at a raid at a popular gay night spot, I made it out of the kitchen door and over a fence. I was underage and had a fake ID.

On the day after four students were killed at Kent State, Philly antiwar activists took to the streets and headed to City Hall for a peaceful rally. Halfway there, we were met by police in army tanks. Officers jumped out of the vehicles and rushed into the crowd, indiscriminately beating people over the head. A girl in front of me fell in a pool of blood.

Then-Police Commissioner (and later Mayor) Frank Rizzo, who once strip searched the Black Panthers outside their North Philly headquarters to humiliate them in front of TV cameras, had a remedy for dealing with criminals and antiwar activists alike: “Spacco il capo (Break their heads).”

Rizzo wasn’t police chief or mayor on the terrible day that a police helicopter dropped a bomb on a black neighborhood in West Philly to evict MOVE members whose back-to-nature lifestyles aroused the ire of their neighbors. All but two MOVE members died. Hundreds of homes burned.

Now comes the terrible news that over a dozen Philly cops dragged three suspects out of their car and beat the crap out of them. The scene, caught on film by a TV station, was frighteningly reminiscent of what happened to Rodney King in the 90s.

Philly officials are now busy putting their spin on what happened: Three officers have been killed in the past two years in the line of duty. Cops are feeling the stress. If that’s true, then the Philly police department needs to find ways to help officers deal with that stress. And to discipline the cops involved in the beatings. Cops shouldn’t get a free ride when they misbehave. They have to be held accountable, like everyone else.

Police brutality is not just a Philly phenomenon. Every city has its nightmare stories of police officers misusing their power. Who can forget Abner Louima, sodomized by Brooklyn police officers with a broomstick, or Idriss Stelley, an unarmed man with mental health issues shot to death in a San Francisco movie theater? Or police storming into the Castro after an ACT UP demo to smash windows and beat up queers?

What happened in Philly unfortunately could have happened anywhere.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical southern Italian queer atheist with a website: www.avicollimecca.com