The beating of 18-year-old Jordan Miles on a Homewood street by three plainclothes police officers earlier this month is inexplicable to everyone -- except the Fraternal Order of Police spokesman who tried to put an unconscionable act of violence into "perspective" for outraged skeptics.

"These guys have stellar records. They're decorated for the job that they do," FOP Vice President Charles Hanlon said in a spirited defense of undercover officers Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak. "They've gone through training to recognize guns," Mr. Hanlon added with a flourish that begs a very big question. "Their actions were correct and law abiding by everything they have received in their training."

Mr. Hanlon made a far more interesting point than he intended. Perhaps the three officers who transformed Jordan Miles' face into something the Elephant Man would recognize really are a product of their training. If so, it should scare the hell out of everyone who lives, works or visits the city.

The undercover cops severely beat a Homewood resident who happens to be an honor student at Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts High School because they mistook a bottle of Mountain Dew he allegedly carried for a gun. Their "law abiding" training led them to use a Taser on him, yank one of his dreadlocks from his scalp and bludgeon him until his face needed its own ZIP code.

Mr. Miles, a violist in his senior year at CAPA, denies he carried a bottle of soda as he walked to his grandmother's house that night. The three plainclothes officers said they identified themselves as cops when they spotted the teenager, but he ran away.

Clearly, running away was an act of defiance that merited a brutal beating once they caught him. At 150 pounds, Jordan Miles, with his dreadlocks and bohemian Christian spirit, was a threat to the community -- not them.

"The demand by special interest groups that the officers be removed from the streets is an insult to their hard work," Mr. Hanlon said, insisting that the officers be given a very large benefit of the doubt. He believes the cops deserve more sympathy than Jordan Miles, who still faces charges of aggravated assault and resisting arrest.

Perhaps Mr. Hanlon has a point. After all, it isn't like Pittsburgh has a history of police violence against citizens, or anything. As for that Justice Department-imposed consent decree that Pittsburgh operated under for years, that's ancient history. By now, all the so-called bad apples are retired and pulling down big city pensions.

Actually, Mr. Hanlon has convinced me that there are any number of rational explanations for what happened to Jordan Miles that don't include racial profiling or gross incompetence. Thank goodness these guys don't see color when they're yanking dreadlocks. Think how bad the beating would have gotten if they had noticed he was a black guy.

Here are the top alternative theories for what happened that night:

• They were re-enacting a scene from an obscure "Three Stooges" episode and got carried away.

• The smell of terror is more intoxicating coming from a good kid than a bad one.

• The cops were trying on Gollum's shiny new ring when something evil came over them.

• You gotta admit -- the kid looks a lot like a young Mumia Abu-Jamal.

• They saw Jordan walking down the street the day before with his viola case and assumed he was a member of the dreaded Itzhak Perlman Gang.

• The city hasn't been sued enough for wrongful police beatings, so they wanted to help our deprived trial lawyers get plenty of work.

• They are three Terminators sent from the future to eliminate Jordan Miles before he can hook up with Sarah Connor and form an underground cell of violin-playing revolutionaries.

• Any time you see a young black man walking down the street minding his own business at night in a neighborhood like Homewood, he's got to be guilty of something.

Tony's Take on Comix by Tony Norman is featured exclusively in the Opinion section on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.