I shouldn't encourage you to be so mani -like as to require all your own self started threads for every topic, however ...
Your title, Town and Gown, is quite appropriate. This has more to do with class than race.
I suspect you're quite right. Had this Black man a nobody, he'd have gone to jail and been found guilty by the courts, too.
What would his crime have been? Being an uppity-citizen to a cop.
Cops get called names all the time. I don't think this cop was acting in a racist manner but he probably didn't appreciate being accused of being one by an uppity nigra.
Wish we had a tape of the incident to really KNOW what happened.