Voir Dire Straits
By Mitch Berg
I strongly disapprove of police brutality.
So all I can add to the video Ed runs in this post is that the cops’ defense attorneys had better shoot for a jury of parents of teenagers.
3 Responses to “Voir Dire Straits”
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March 3rd, 2009 at 7:35 am
Don’t think that will or should do it. (I guess it’s possible that there are things that don’t appear in the video from that angle that make what happened less horrible than it seems, but it’s not the way to bet.)
That said, unlike others of the many “isolated incidents”, at least this one is being treated like a crime, albeit only a misdemeanor.
But can you imagine how differently it might have been handled if the person tuned up was, say, a middle-aged alky rather than a cute fifteen year-old-girl? Or if, as in some other cases, the thumper had followed “standard procedure” and turned off the camera?
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:24 pm
The excuse given by the cop for punching out the teenage girl was that he was preventing her from attacking him.
Ok, I’ll give you that teenagers can be profoundly irritating.
But really, how much risk is there from a flip flop? This cop is going to have to just get down on his knees and throw himself on the mercy of whomever decides these things.
Seemed like it might be one of those instances of (ste)’roid rage’ one hears about among police, from what can be seen on the video…
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Well, he doesn’t have a much better story; I guess he’s got to go with whatever he can invent.
(I don’t doubt, at all, that the kid was running her mouth improperly; I just think that we have a term for a thug tuning one up in response to that: assault.)