The brutality exhibited by the police in this video is so unwarranted, so vicious, and so totally despicable, that not even the usual “defend-the-police-no-matter-what” automatons are putting up a fight in the comments section. Of course, the “Safety Manager” maintains that the fine officer who obviously assaults a man for absolutely nothing, deserves to keep his job.
Before the video was discovered, the police officer simply made up a story that the assaulted bystander was trying to strike the police officer. The DPD, however, believes that police who lie and attack the public unprovoked should be kept on the force. Your tax dollars at work.
Note also how the video camera, being operated by a police force employee, immediately pans away from the action after it becomes apparent that excessive force is being used.
Wes Bertrand, author of The Psychology of Liberty, was recently pulled over by the San Diego Police Department for running a stop sign. He went to court to fight the ticket, and although his intention was related more to questioning the authority of the judge (I do not think he intended to win) one of his statements during the trial brings up a good question.
He told the judge that the police officer’s accusations were false. He tried to prove this by claiming that right before he drove through the stop sign a red pick-up truck crossed the intersection (interestingly, also rolling past the stop sign). I think Wes was trying to blame the police officer of intentionally bullying him, but an alternatively if there was a F-150 crossing the intersection Wes would have had to stop, otherwise they would have collided.
Ultimately, the judge argues that since the police officer was stopped, he was in a better position to decide whether or not Wes had really stopped at the stop sign.
Ultimately, these types of trials hold the police officer’s words over the defendants. Knowing full well that all police departments are currently suffering from budget setbacks, they have seriously intensified their campaign to distribute tickets (to create revenue). At midnight, with an empty road, what is to stop a police officer from pulling you over, falsely charging you with a traffic violation, and then blatantly lying in court? Nothing.
Our current justice system is flawed from the very basic levels to the highest.