By now, everyone has heard about the incident in Philadelphia where 15 police officers pulled 3 black men from a building and started beating them without restriction. For once, it wasn't just some guy standing on a corner filming it, but a news crew whose helicopter just happened to be flying overhead. At this point the 15 police officers have been suspended, and the typical talk about how this wasn't racially motivated and how the officers have been under stress, is being used as an excuse for bad behavior.

It is true that officers in Philadelphia have been under some stress lately, as there was the murder of a fellow officer earlier in the week. But Philadelphia had been trying to do a crackdown in one of their most troubled neighborhoods lately, and if anyone thought this was something that didn't have a potential to happen, they knew nothing about people and probably shouldn't have been in leadership positions to begin with.

In essence, the officers exhibited a typical lynch mob mentality, choice of words purposely being used. It was somewhat reminiscent of the days when a mob would decide on the guilt of someone because of who they were, decided they didn't want to wait for justice to occur, and took the law into their own hands. And when one jumps the gun, and emotions are already at a tense point, it's hard to stop, slow down, and take a step back to look at it more logically.

History does indeed repeat itself, and leaders and managers are supposed to learn from history, and it doesn't matter what the vocation is. But when the job the employees performs directly impact the populace, it becomes even more critical for those in leadership positions to be able to forecast the possibility of negative reactions to negative stimulus.

Has it really been that long since the riots in Los Angeles related to the Rodney King rulings?