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I am thoroughly relieved and pleased with the continuing attention that the police brutality incident against the University of Maryland student is receiving. It was only a matter of time before someone recorded one of these shockingly all too common physical assaults by police in riot gear against harmless and unarmed students.

You should know that this is not an isolated incident, far from it. I've lived in Baltimore and Philadelphia over the years, and not once in either of those two cities have I ever feared being attacked by police officers for being a bystander at a post-sporting event celebration, yet I've come to expect such feelings at [the university] after any major basketball victory.

From 2001 to 2006, I tried my best to ensure I was on campus for the annual Duke basketball game, and I've seen this exact incident — albeit with different participants — played out dozens of times whenever the riot gear made an appearance. These incidents, I'm sure, also came with police documents that were fabricated in the authorizing officer's imagination and were equally bogus. I always managed to avoid any such confrontations, but now my younger brother attends school there, and I fear he may not be so lucky.

Thank you for bringing this to the public's attention. Regarding any [Prince George's police department] statement you may receive, unless it confesses that this has been an ongoing problem for many years, you can consider it as genuine as the police reports regarding this incident. Bring this menace and those who enable it to occur to justice.

Please believe that this is far from an isolated incident.

Jerry Grzeskiewicz Jr., Bowie