This wasn’t Harlem, or East L.A. It was Cambridge, where the intellectual elite have deigned to live. Not likely to have a race riot amongst that crowd of eggheads.
There are people in Cambridge who can be incited to throw a rock and hurt someone...or should the cop have been able to mind meld with the public and be sure he was in no danger?
You are correct. When I lived in Cambridge, there was a shopping mall (a nice one) that I stopped going to because there was a heavy gang presence and there were occasional shootings. It is false to think of Cambridge as some sort of lush gated community for eggheads.
I’d venture that the reason the prosecutor’s office dropped the charges is because they realized the difficulty of showing that there was a danger of imminent violence. I went to court three times representing people with the same charges and when the prosecutors saw that the defendant had an attorney, they just dismissed the case each time.
Just guessing, I’d bet that 90% of the time, the officer is just fed up with the defendant, and vents his frustration by arresting him, even though he knows the charges will probably be dropped later. It’s better than hitting him over the head.