Who needs pepper spray or tasers if you are a cop in need of protection yourself against a small Latino woman whom violently assaults you with — water (allegedly).
Tasers and pepper spray could bring unwarranted attention, at least from blogs and twitter. Better to take that water like an man and then go sucker punch the woman thug instead. Watch this video from the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Philly over the weekend. Please note the size of the woman in comparison to the size of the police officer who comes up from behind her and delivers the kind of “illegal blow” from his fist that the Marquis of Queensbury Rules don’t permit in authorized matches between professional boxers:
Excessive force anyone? Just remember this. Next time you are at a parade, if you accidentally spill your soda on a cop, or god forbid, brush up against him or her in a tight space, even without any intent to do so, this could be you. Was the woman who “allegedly” tossed water at the cop behaving badly? Sure. Did the police officer really need to escalate the situation by punching her in the face from behind as she walked away causing her to bleed profusely, possibly giving her concussion? He was after all (to my eyes anyway) roughly twice her size, in weight class alone.
You tell me.
You tell me.
Of course, by looking at the video it is quite likely the woman the office hit was not the person who tossed water (or beer) on him. Look at the video carefully. It looks as if another person was the individual who tossed some liquid at the cops and the woman who was beaten down just happened to be holding a bottle of water at the wrong place and the wrong time.
That may seem a horrible injustice, but I’m sure she had it coming anyway, for as Clint Eastwood reminded me as I watched Unforgiven the other night (a better performance than he gave at the RNC, btw) “We all have it coming, kid.” (Yes, that is snark).
UPDATE:
The police Lieutenant who hit her is now restricted to administrative duties and the incident is under investigation according to ABC News:
A Philadelphia cop under investigation for punching a woman in the face has been taken off the streets and restricted to administrative duties during the investigation, police said. […]
It was decided today that the officer would be placed on “restricted status,” meaning that he is relegated to “administrative duties pending the outcome of the investigation,” according to Lt. Ray Evers. […]
The video shows a crowd of blue-shirted police officers standing in the middle of a street, around a car. Someone on the left appears to throw something resembling silly string or a liquid on the cops. An officer in a white shirt rushes out of the crowd and goes after a woman with long, dark hair and a black T-shirt.
Her back is to the camera so it is unclear if she was saying anything to him. The officer appears to punch her in the face and then hit her in the back of the head. She falls to the ground where two officers apprehend her and lead her off. As she passes the camera, blood can be seen streaming down her face.
[Statement from Councilwoman Maria D Quinones Sanchez https://www.facebook.com/maria.quinonessanchez?ref=ts&fref=ts%5D:
So her response basically states that both sides do it.
Brilliant.
A uniformed thug. Even if he thought she had “assaulted a peace officer”, the use of force was clearly excessive.
Philly is not alone in having dicks for cops, as TarheelDem knows all too well.
I read this is Saturday’s hard copy Trib:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-29/news/ct-met-chicago-officer-charged-20120929_1_chicago
-cop-prisoner-lockup
This dick even reneged on his offer to release the guy after getting the sex. If there is anything Chicagoans hate it’s a cop or politician that takes the bribe and doesn’t deliver.
In my own experience, none of the cops were as bad as either of these cases.
But there is an Occupier named DJ who sits under house arrest on a charge of assaulting a cop who according to reports actually hit DJ. The case was dismissed in May or June because the cop said that he might have bumped into DJ. But the prosecutor is so anxious for a conviction that she took the incident to a grand jury and got an indictment.
It’s not just the cops who are a problem. It’s other folks in the criminal justice system as well.
Seems like every week there is a story about someone being injured or killed by excessive police force. We all had ringside seats last year when police all over the country beat up and gassed hundreds of unarmed people for the heinous crime of camping in the park. And the country shrugs…
Forget drones, if Americans cared anything about their own civil liberties (other than the liberty to pack heat), politicians would not be able to appear in public without being asked about this. Maybe when it gets so common that everyone will know someone who has been brutalized by cops (I realize this is already true in many minority communities) will people start to care.
Seems like every week there is a story about someone being injured or killed by excessive police force.
Digby has posts all the time about cops who taser someone who ends up dead. Almost always, it’s someone with mental health problems or health problems dealing with the heart.
If it were an Occupy event, the police would have charged the woman with battery and not put the cop on desk duty.
Dollars to donuts, there are not consequences for the cop.
Maybe. Maybe not. They seem serious in the Chicago case I cited, but maybe that’s because he had gay sex with a prisoner.
Whaddaya want? It was a Puerto Rican parade. They’re all illegals anyway, amirite?
No way to tell what else might have been going on, but there’s no way she threw the liquid. Looks pretty clear: she was walking into the street, someone behind her splashed something at the cops, it looks like she gets splashed with it, turns around to see what’s going on, then cops who weren’t even looking in the direction of the splasher when the liquid was thrown see her with a water bottle and assume she needs to be punched in the head.