NEW YORK (AP) – A white police officer was disciplined after he stopped and questioned a black motorist who turned out to be one of the highest ranking commanders in the New York City Police Department.

Chief Douglas Zeigler, the head of the NYPD’s Community Affairs Bureau and the highest uniformed black officer on the force, was off duty and sitting in his department-issued SUV on a Queens street on May 2 when two white police officers approached the vehicle and confronted him.

The full details of what happened next aren’t completely clear, but a department spokesman confirmed a report in the New York Daily News that the encounter turned testy, and one of the officers tried to wrest open Zeigler’s door, even after the three-star chief had identified himself.

“He dealt with the chief in a discourteous manner, which is unacceptable,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

Just why the officers decided to question Zeigler also was not clear. The Daily News reported that Zeigler was parked near a fire hydrant and one of the plainclothed officers spotted Zeigler’s service weapon inside the vehicle. Browne said he could not confirm whether the officers saw a gun. He did not specify what disciplinary actions were taken by the department. The News said the officer was stripped of his gun and badge and placed on modified duty Friday.

The incident was reported as police are being criticized for stopping and frisking record numbers of pedestrians – about 145,000 in the first quarter of this year. The majority of them were black or Hispanic.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been leading demonstrations in the city to protest the acquittals of three police officers in the shooting death of an unarmed man as he left his bachelor party, took note of the Zeigler incident while speaking at his weekly rally in Harlem.

“You can’t make this stuff up!” he said. “The problem isn’t that they didn’t recognize him. It is that they don’t recognize our rights!”

Zeigler has headed the Community Affairs Bureau since January 2006. His wife, Neldra Zeigler, is the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for equal employment opportunity.

AP-ES-05-10-08 1426EDT