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  3. Mesa Police Caught on Camera Beating Suspect

Mesa Police Caught on Camera Beating Suspect

Feb 8, 2014 | Police Brutality

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A Rodney King case in Arizona? Hard for some to believe, we suppose, but for those of us familiar with such things, really not all that unusual. The setting this past Friday was near the corner of 44th Street and Broadway in Phoenix. A video taken by a bystander shows three or four Mesa police officers punching a suspect while the suspect was face down on the street. It also shows the cops smacking the suspect’s head into the pavement.

Police brutality, unfortunately, is a fact of life in the United States. And while the existence of the problem is not a condemnation of all police officers, it would be nice if just once we could avoid the law enforcement “spin” when these things do occur, since the spin often, as in this case, has nothing to with the allegation of police misconduct, and at times has nothing to do with reality.

Watch the video, and we think you’ll agree that if it is a depiction of what happened (and not, say, a manufactured piece of film), the event represents a classic example of a case where the police inflict the penalty on a person, as opposed to waiting for the jury to decide, in the first instance, whether the person is guilty of a crime. But our law enforcement officials do tend to circle their wagons regardless of the facts, and the spin they put on this one is typical. The response to the video brought the following comments from the police. They say the suspect:

  • tried to pass a bad check;
  • was a “transient”;
  • was from Texas;
  • barricaded himself in a house earlier that day;
  • phoned in a bomb threat to 911;
  • “escaped” from a hospital where he was being treated for injuries;
  • “forced” someone to drive him to Phoenix; and
  • (this is the real clincher), was “leaning over” in a car.

We’ve tried to make sense out of these official responses to the beating of an unarmed man by a number of cops, but we simply are unable to do so. The official spin on this one, carried to its logical conclusion, is that if the cops think you did something wrong, that’s carte blanche to beat the hell out of you.

Law Offices of David A. Black
40 North Central Avenue #1850
Phoenix, AZ 85004
(480) 280-8028

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