The reason why this story pisses me off so much is the simple fact that in America, if you do not instantly comply with a command from police to produce an ID, you can die at their hands and the chief will say, as he has already in this case, that no unreasonable force was used.

So legit.

I wish I had some of the things recorded from when I was younger.

At 16 years old, I broke into a rim shop, and the police showed up. After they caught and had my hands cuffed behind my back in the back of a police car, I was pulled out and beaten (cuffs still on) by 6+ cops using flashlights etc. They claimed I was not cooperating... then I was roughed up again at the police station. When my mom came she insisted I talked to them and told them what they wanted to know. I said "Fuck you, I'm suing" They laughed and told me where to file reports, My mom actually took their side even though she could see my face bleeding...

That being said. I have also met many good police officers. There are good cops and bad cops everywhere. I was a punk trouble maker kid, and probably was just being taught a much needed lesson...

Again, you're just speculating. We don't see that in this video at least. According to what I just read on CNN he wasn't even involved in the disturbance between his wife and daughter. Maybe the cops just showed up, assumed he was involved because he was the only male standing nearby and proceeded to twist his arm behind his back forcefully as they are wont to do and then tripped him to the ground when he tried to keep them from breaking his arm.

This is not true. My son stopped breathing when he was 3 and the first people on the scene were the police. They had oxygen, first aid and a defibrillator. They were able to get him going and stabilized until the EMT's got there.....

why is this such a big deal?

tip of the iceberg

While I think what happened here is a tragedy, one thing you need to understand is that most of the time the dispatch calls to the police are pretty vague. The call can simply say domestic dispute. My cop buddy has responded to that generic call many times and found everything from a guy holding his wife at gunpoint to a woman who was pissed at her teenage daughter for not cleaning her room and she wanted the police to make her clean her room.

So they show up at the scene most of the time with no idea who is involved and exactly what is going on. They are also lied to every day. Most domestics involve a woman and a man so it is fair for them to assume that it is he and the woman involved in this and that he might not be telling them the truth.

This doesn't mean that they have the right to kill him, but the police are in a situation where they often don't know what they are getting into when they roll up onto the scene so they have to expect the worst. If this guy resisted them they don't know if he is going to pull out a knife or a gun or if he just pissed off that they don't believe him.

You really going to defend those cops who committed murder?

Too many devils advocated here - I hope they all do jail time - disgusting abuse shown in that video.

Correct.

It does't matter if he was involved in the disturbance or not. Police rolled into a domestic, found him on the scene, and police started to question him. He was "uncooperative" - Either he was evasive, refused to answer questions at the scene of a crime, or tried to leave...

No matter how this played out, the bottom line is the police responded to a crime and questioned suspects. He was a suspect if only because he was there. There is no law saying you have to answer questions, but police can surely detain you until they believe you are not a suspect.

This person died because he refused to cooperate, plain and simple.

As I said, this guy didn't deserve to die. My understanding is that they tried to talk to him and her refused so they tried to handcuff him and he resisted. I also understand he was pepper sprayed and then shortly after that the video starts and we see the cops on top of him.

We don't see them beating him up or choking him. We see them holding him down and handcuffing him. Did all four of them need to jump on him? I don't know. I wasn't there. I didn't see what happened before the video started rolling.

It is a tragedy what happened to this guy, but as I said before, the police have no idea if he is involved or not, if he is armed or not, and what his intentions are. If you refuse to talk to them then resist them they assume the worst.

There should be an investigation into this. I will wait to say whether or not they should go to jail until I hear all of the evidence. Supposedly there is security cam footage of the entire event. I would love to see that so we can see exactly how this started.

Not true.

I agree that the police have a tough job and that they are dealing with the worst aspects of humanity in the form of ignorant losers and criminals, people with an incentive to lie to get out of trouble, drunks, people high on drugs and the like.

But I can't ignore the daily videos I see and reports I read online of woeful misconduct that are practiced every day by law enforcement officers around the country. The whole police culture now in every agency is polluted with an "us against them" mentality that leads them to hyper aggressive over reaction to nearly every situation. They violate people's rights with impunity even for minor infractions, shoot and kill animals, shoot and kill people- sometimes people even sleeping in their owns beds- at the drop of a hat and there is no accountability or punishment for the criminal behavior except in the most egregious of cases.

The United Sates has become a Gulag nation with literally millions of people behind bars, many for things that shouldn't even be crimes, all for the sake of making money for the for-profit prison industrial complex. An American citizen in 2014 is far more likely to be killed by a police officer than he or she is by a terrorist.

I would be in favor of what some police agencies already do of mandating police officers wear those lightweight cameras to record their entire shift. Not only does it protect them from bullshit accusations by citizens, but more importantly it protects citizens from the police violating their rights or hurting people. Accountability is a good thing that would serve both sides.

Corrupt police aren't new and not unique to America.

You're right, but I was limiting my discussion to the U.S. because the incident that started the thread occurred here. The technology of ubiquitous cell phones with video capability and easy publishing on Youtube, Live Leak and the internet in general are relatively new and powerful technologies that highlight all the problems, whereas years ago, it would just be the police's word against yours.

I agree 100% that police officers should all be wearing those lightweight cameras that record their entire shift. I also agree completely that the justice system is broken. It is no longer about justice and hopefully rehabilitating criminals so that they might once again become productive members of society, it is about putting bodies in bunks so corporate owned prisons can cash in.

While there are a lot of videos online, I look at it like this: there are 330 million people in this country and over 1 million police officers. There are bound to be some shitty situations. If there are 10 videos posted online one day showing police acting inappropriately it seems like a lot. We don't see the other 600,000 incidents where the police were professional and did their job accordingly.

I also think they need to revise the review board process when there are complaints against police and incidents where people were hurt or killed. They also need to modify the union rules to make getting rid of those undesirable cops easier. There are far more people who want a career in law enforcement then there are available jobs. They can afford to be picky when it comes to who they hire. Sadly, it is a job where you never truly know how someone will do until they are in it and doing it. There needs to be a better process for weeding out those who clearly are not fit for the job, but end up in it forever because it is very hard to fire them.

Even limited to the US, corruption in police has been here since the very beginning, that's why hollywood loves it so, plenty of material to make movies with. I wouldn't bet that it's worse now than it's ever been.

Police is not an elite force and best people do not compete to join so it is impossible to have 100% good/quality cops and not 95% that you mention. That is life.
And as you say 95% are good so it is not justified to blame all cops as some people do. This is humanity, not robots.

Scum of the earth psychos with savior complexes usually with subpar IQs and small cocks (nothing like a badge and a gun to make up for that).

Useless fucks

I have three friends who are police officers and they all tell me the same thing - They deal with the bottom 5% of society. They tell me every day they are kicked, punched, or spit on. Fuck that.

Sure. But give some thought to the numbers. The US has some 734k police officers. Let's just say that 1% of them are scum sucking bottom of the barrel people who shouldn't be police officers... That's a lot of bad apples.

Well yeah, the odds of them coming into contact with a real life terrorist is about 1 in ten billion while I see a police officer at least once a day or every other day.

But we should let the damn potheads out of jail. Save us some tax dollars.

I think I agree with this, but the downside is you'll see footage that the general public believes is horrible or criminal when it's really not. Remember that officer who pepper sprayed the college kids? That's a great example. Did he do something wrong, or was he doing his job?

which explains the 80% prison minority rate

Exactly! He was killed because was is a terrorist. If anybody think different - try to prove that he wasn't.

I'd call drones, but police officers did their job just perfect. Congrats :thumbsup

Sometimes you say some of the stupidest fucking things............

And to the Op your a blooming fucking idiot too. To go around and label a group based on actions of a few bad apples shows how ignorant you are.....

ROFL, anyone disagreeing is clearly a home rat or been on downers there hole life and never enjoyed it, cause cops, are fucking extortion experts focused on one goal and that's to imprison you and/or to fine your ass so they can get paid.

I Have Major respect for police on federal levels but the daily cop is a fucking joke, thats why there the daily cop you see.

I will help you learn a little English. Sometimes is not the same as always. :2 cents:

Cop shoots 70 year old man reaching for cane
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...-traffic-stop/

Cop killed a 17 year old after mistaking his Wii controller for a gun
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...awyer-alleges/

this bolsters my earlier point-

peeps don't upload videos of

cops don't shoot 70 year old man

cops don't shoot 17 year old

there would be millions of those.