To get an idea just how pervasive the racially-charged issue, and reality, of over-aggressive policing is for Baltimore and for its leaders, consider just some of the things that happened on a single day – yesterday, Wednesday, Jan. 20.

In Washington, a Black Lives Matter protester interrupted [VIDEO] Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake as she addressed the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which she heads.

“16 shots & a cover up,” read the sign April Goggins held up, calling on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel to resign over his handling of the Lacquan McDonald case.

In Baltimore’s City Hall that same day, the spending board approved $135,000 in payouts for still more excessive force lawsuits filed against Baltimore’s police officers. (And in an action that will mean millions more in spending, the Board of Estimates also accepted a company’s bid to provide body cameras to more than 2,500 police officers.)

Meanwhile, that morning in the north Baltimore neighborhood of Charles Village, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine physician on his way to a pharmacy to pick up Liquid Tylenol for his daughter suddenly found himself confronted by a city police officer who, before saying much else, handcuffed him.

The officer asked “Did you get a pill bottle from that guy?” according to Berger, who was eventually released without arrest and described the incident on social media.

A 42-year-old white man, Berger was disturbed by the incident but made sure to put his experience in context at the start of his post.

“File under: What if I was black?” Berger wrote. He reiterated the point to The Brew later. “These things happen to black people daily.”

“I’m Going to Need to Handcuff You”

Asked to comment on Berger’s account of what happened yesterday at the corner of 25th and Charles streets, Sgt. Jarron Jackson, a BPD spokesman, said “we are aware of this incident and it is being investigated internally.”

Here’s part of the complaint Berger sent them:

“The officer said, I’m going to need to handcuff you, and proceeded to cuff my hands behind my back without asking permission. He asked me, “Did you get a pill bottle from that guy?” when, in fact, I had not spoken to or made eye contact with anyone on my way from 28th and Calvert to 25th and Charles. He then asked me if I had gotten a cigarette from “that guy,” when I had spoken to no one.

He then asked if I had ID. Rather than uncuffing me and letting me get my wallet, he proceeded to rifle through my pockets, taking my wallet out of my back pocket and searching it.”

Berger said he emailed investigations@baltimorepolice.org and eventually received a phone call from an internal affairs detective who was polite, but unapologetic.

“They said they will investigate ‘and take a taped deposition at some later date,’” he said.

Berger said he was disturbed to receive no apology from the officer or the detective who called and summed it all up in his post this way:

“The episode was traumatic, unprofessional, and wholly unnecessary,” he said. “He made a mistake by assuming I had spoken to someone, when I did no such thing; handcuffed me without any need to do so; and searched me without any due cause.”

Wants to do More

Hovering over Berger’s cuffing, Rawlings-Blake’s (briefly) interrupted speech and the settlements and body camera spending in City Hall is Freddie Gray’s April 12 death in police custody.

It’s been nine months since city residents took to the streets to protest police brutality, following the release of a video showing the 25-year-old West Baltimore man screaming as officers hauled him into the back of a police van.

(In the background, as well, is the violent city officers are charged with policing: 2015 saw a record 344 murders in Baltimore.)

Berger said he was moved by what happened to him on Charles Street, acknowledging how very minor it was compared to the arrests, beatings, shootings and deaths experienced primarily by black city residents after encounters with law enforcement.

The internist said he has been supportive and active on the Black Lives Matter issue – in particular through the White Coats for Black Lives medical student-run organization – but that he understood it in a different way after what happened yesterday.

“Now, [I feel] guilty I haven’t done more,” he said. “My rabbi suggested I attend with him protests in Annapolis for police reform. I will certainly try.”

Another way Berger is considering trying to effect change: suing the city and the police department.

If he did take legal action, he told The Brew, it “would not be for personal gain” but to help spur change.