Video Sunday: Bad Cop
Written by Glen Hughes on October 19th, 2008 8 Comments
With the astronomical increase of people to Salem each weekend in October the cops are cracking down. You might remember that in a recent article about the night life here we mentioned how Salem was booming on weekend nights. The downside to our bars and restaurants being packed with revelers is that some tend to over imbibe and a random few show up only to cause trouble. Whatever the circumstances its best to mind your P’s and Q’s because a random few coppers aren’t going to take any flack what so ever.
We would love to see the entire event in order to see what transpired to provoke this police officer to take the actions he did. And as such we are not pointing fingers only spreading a word of warning.
Must bring him back to the days of being a Division 4 HS football “star”.
No matter how bad things might look, I tend to side with the cops unless the evidence is pretty damning. As you said, it would be helpful to know more, but either way, I can’t let every little thing become the outrage of the day for me… the world is full of stuff like this going in both directions.
Btw, if you’re trying to help Salem as a “Salem insider”, you might not want to post such things which are surely the exception, and not the rule.
After hearing reports of Officers being punched in the face by unruly drunkards. I don’t blame them for acting offensively to people who don’t take direction from a uniformed officer………..
On the other hand, the cop told him to leave and AS HE WAS WALKING AWAY. he hit him with the choke hold…. a little overly aggressive i think…..
Sam,
As you stated this is the exception and we as viewers don’t know the full extent of what happened. By posting this here I am responding to a flood of emails asking to show both sides of our city. I sincerely hope that people think twice before getting into situations that require police presence. I also know that sometimes people need a bit of a wake up call, perhaps this was such a wake up call.
Thanks for chiming in.
I could beat that cop up (if he took off the badge and gun, that is).
Hey Rodney King….what do you think?
ok, i’m sure there was something that led to this… the thing is though, there are codes and practices that officers must follow for all types of situations. in this case, the officer threatened and struck a civilian with undue cause. note the “get out of here or you’re next” is after the kid holding the camera says something about “…now he’s got bandages on his head…” so it sounds like the threat is in reference of violence, not just arrest. the officer struck out of anger AS the guy was walking away, thus complying to the officer’s demands. this should be grounds for suspension. like the guy above, i usually find myself watching things like this and siding with the police thinking “shut up and do what he says, why are you so stupid?” but he WAS leaving. also, i can film what ever i want when ever i want and no one, officer or otherwise, can tell me differently. it is your right to film, the youtube part is the questionable bit.
This video is disgusting. I have heard some reports say things like “we think the cop may have been punched earlier in the night”….My response to that…. WHO CARES. It doesn’t matter if that cop had a gun pulled on him 5 minutes before he strangled this kid, it still does not excuse the cops ridiculous actions towards this kid. Plus, given the fact that this kid was walking away holding hands with his girlfriend, it doesn’t appear that he was acting in a threatening manner in any way.
In viewing the video, I count 5 cops, 2 men and one woman. I’m not seeing hundreds of roudy drunkards. The victim was definetely outnumbered.
I am eager to see the civil suit which will inevitably results out of this case. I’m a lawyer and I see dollar signs all over this case.