This is What Police Brutality Looks Like...
fishmongerfunk
4,154 Posts
i offer this video as an utter contrast to the video posted the other week of the cop who punched a lady who was interfering with an arrest...
Nobody disputes that the disturbing surveillance video screened for a Manhattan criminal jury Friday shows a housing cop bashing an Iraq war veteran with his baton.
The question is whether Housing Officer David London, 45, was committing an act of police brutality or using necessary force to subdue an aggressive suspect.
Prosecutors called London's beating of 28-year-old Walter Harvin in July 2008 an assault that the cop tried to cover up. But the defense insisted London's response was appropriate.
In the video, captured on security cameras at the upper West Side housing project where Harvin's mother lived, Harvin is seen shoving and scuffling with London, who then beat the ex-soldier even after he was cuffed.
The video is the main evidence in the case because Harvin, who returned from Iraq two weeks before the incident and suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome, has vanished.
"He keeps hitting Mr. Harvin," assistant DA David Drucker said of the moment when the victim cowers on the floor as London keeps clubbing him. "If it was a boxing match, you'd step in and stop the fight."
London then tried "to cover up his misconduct," Drucker claimed, by falsely signing a criminal complaint charging Harvin with two counts of assault.
Defense lawyer Stephen Worth said Harvin was resisting and that if the tape had audio, jurors would have heard him threaten to kill the cop.
"This is a use of necessary force," Worth said. "Officer London strikes him until he gets compliance."
oyaniv@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/06/19/2010-06-19_jury_sees_cop_beat_vet_on_vid.html#ixzz0rc9qizYh
Nobody disputes that the disturbing surveillance video screened for a Manhattan criminal jury Friday shows a housing cop bashing an Iraq war veteran with his baton.
The question is whether Housing Officer David London, 45, was committing an act of police brutality or using necessary force to subdue an aggressive suspect.
Prosecutors called London's beating of 28-year-old Walter Harvin in July 2008 an assault that the cop tried to cover up. But the defense insisted London's response was appropriate.
In the video, captured on security cameras at the upper West Side housing project where Harvin's mother lived, Harvin is seen shoving and scuffling with London, who then beat the ex-soldier even after he was cuffed.
The video is the main evidence in the case because Harvin, who returned from Iraq two weeks before the incident and suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome, has vanished.
"He keeps hitting Mr. Harvin," assistant DA David Drucker said of the moment when the victim cowers on the floor as London keeps clubbing him. "If it was a boxing match, you'd step in and stop the fight."
London then tried "to cover up his misconduct," Drucker claimed, by falsely signing a criminal complaint charging Harvin with two counts of assault.
Defense lawyer Stephen Worth said Harvin was resisting and that if the tape had audio, jurors would have heard him threaten to kill the cop.
"This is a use of necessary force," Worth said. "Officer London strikes him until he gets compliance."
oyaniv@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/06/19/2010-06-19_jury_sees_cop_beat_vet_on_vid.html#ixzz0rc9qizYh
Comments
those dudes have an incredibly tough job to do and have to deal with so many assholes.
i posted this because it seems so clear cut (he was being battered while he was on the ground and handcuffed) as opposed that video that was posted the other week that had certain people up in arms.
i don;t get your point.
of course it will be the jury that will pass judgement but in watching that short clip wouldn;t you say that cop defintiely took a few whacks more than was necessary to subdue the man?
This happens all the time, video or not. In NYC and elsewhere?
I dont get the twist? Another police brutality? This is raer?
i don;t know this "happens all the time" but its usually a "he said, she said" type of situation that the blue wall of silence will typically cover over or otherwiuse sweep under the rug. how often does the incident get caught on video? how often do stories of police brutality make national and international news?
no new twist except that it is topical and i felt provided a strong contrast with the other video. i think it helps put the other incident into perspective. the question is when does the legitimate police use of force overstep the rule of law and veer into sheer brutality.
Last Friday was another sad day for the once-respected Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Former British Columbia Appeals Court justice Thomas Braidwood released his scathing final report into the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski following his confrontation with four Mounties ??? Monty Robinson, Kwesi Millington, Gerry Rundel and Bill Bentley ??? at Vancouver International Airport in October 2007.
This report comes on the heels of an unrelated report by former Supreme Court Justice John Major into the 1985 Air India bombing, which condemned the federal government and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for not acting on tips that might have prevented the largest act of terrorism in this nation???s history ??? but reserved its harshest criticism for the RCMP. Justice Major said the Mounties failed utterly to secure the nation???s airports and are still ??? 25 years later ??? not properly organized to deal with terrorist threats in Canada.
Then there was the report last December, also into Mr. Dziekanski???s death, by RCMP public complaints commissioner Paul Kennedy, who painted the quartet that Tasered Mr. Dziekanski as reckless in the extreme, and the overall culture of the RCMP as ???massively inert.???
Yet even amid this catalogue of RCMP missteps, Justice Braidwood???s conclusions seem especially damaging. Officers charged uninformed into the 2007 standoff at Vancouver airport, like bouncers breaking up a barroom brawl. They made no attempt to defuse the tense situation before discharging a Taser ??? five times ??? into the obviously anguished Mr. Dziekanski as he screamed in agony on the floor of the international arrivals lounge.
To make matters worse, according to Justice Braidwood, the four concocted ???unbelievable after-the-fact rationalizations.??? They made ???deliberate misrepresentations??? about how they feared for their lives when Mr. Dziekanski grabbed a stapler from a nearby counter, just so they could ???justify their action.??? For instance, they all claimed the victim lunged at them, while Mr. Braidwood could find no evidence of any move toward the officers.
Higher-ups, too, attempted to cover-up the force???s possible complicity by insisting nothing had gone wrong and by preventing the release of a civilian video recording of the incident. The recording, by passerby Paul Pritchard, was eventually made public, and thankfully so. Without Mr. Pritchard???s evidence, the RCMP might have been able to sweep its members??? conduct under the rug.
The federal government pledged to adopt Justice Braidwood???s eight recommendations, including establishing a civil oversight board to monitor complaints against the Mounties, a board with broad-ranging investigative powers.
Yet the rot inside the RCMP is so great it is not clear whether the force has admitted to itself even now that anything wrong was done by the four officers present at Mr. Dziekanski???s death and those who may have attempted to conceal the truth afterwards.
In April, deputy commissioner Gary Bass apologized to Mr. Dziekanski???s mother, Zofia Cisowski, and paid her an undisclosed amount of financial compensation on behalf of the force. But then Mr. Bass immediately turned around and reassured members in an internal memo, obtained through access to information requests, that the RCMP was apologizing to Ms. Cisowski for the loss of her son, not for what constables on the scene were alleged to have done. ???Even though the word ???apology??? worries some, we are not apologizing for the actions of specific members or saying anything about specific actions,??? wrote Mr. Bass.
This unwillingness to face unpleasant facts will be the undoing of the RCMP. It makes it look like a smug, closed-shop union that bristles at the merest suggestion its members are capable of wrongdoing.
If the Mounties want Canadians to trust them to enforce the law evenly and fairly, they must show they are willing to apply the law first to their own officers. That is something the force manifestly refuses to do.
Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/06/22/the-rcmp-a-police-force-in-denial/#ixzz0rcISSYY8