Today, my roommate pointed me to this video of police brutality that surfaced recently. I never fail to be amazed at how angry, violent and unnecessarily cruel people can be to each other.
| Birmingham police beating video |
Now I'm not defending this guy at all. He's an idiot for running from the cops and endangering innocent civilians on the highway. He even tries to run over one of the police officers that is setting the spike strip at the very beginning of the video. This guy deserves some punishment, but not a beating from the cops. I'll defend the initial action of the first police officer. Initially there's no way to tell if the suspect is unconscious or might try to run, so he jumps in to keep the guy on the ground. I can get behind that. Maybe a bit too much force, but he was probably emotional.
What is inexcusable is that the cop continues to hit the guy with his night stick. Once you get him on the ground, the violence has to stop. Then all the other cops jump in and start punching and kicking him. He obviously isn't going anywhere. He is unconscious and cannot defend himself. This video is disgusting to watch. Even more disgusting is that they knew what they were doing and quickly cut off the video camera.
According to the article, these officers were veteran cops. They should know better. It's easy to get emotional in that job, but you have to be able to control yourself. These lawmen were out of control.
But here's the kicker: look at the time stamp at the top of the video. Yep, January 2008. This happened over a year ago and the video is just coming out. Completely inexcusable. I'm glad they got fired, but I want these guys to be charged for what they did.
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