Foul. End of blog. No wait. Lets look at the video and give you some background. A story has been making waves over in the United States in the past few days after video evidence emerged of a copper just walking up to a woman and throwing a haymaker and knocking her to the floor. The next cause of action is obviously to arrest the woman.
This all happened in Philadelphia at the Puerto Rican Day Parade it emerged that the woman who was punched and arrested may have been part of a group of people to spray silly string over some police officers. Now I know silly string can be a bit annoying but does it warrant someone being punched? At this point I really should share the video so you can see it wasn’t just a punch it was a proper swinging right hook. The type that if you or I did it we’d be in court and would be facing jail time. Please watch the police officer in the white top.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Now you could argue that he was going to grab her but I really don’t think so. If he was doing that he’d still be grabbing her around the neck and that isn’t on. For me it really looks like a pretty calculated assault. Now the officer in question has been suspended for thirty days and is expected to be fired but his union aren’t exactly down with that shall we say.
According to the LA Times report:
John McNesby of the Fraternal Order of Police said Josey (the officer in question) was being treated “like a second-class citizen.”
“He’s being fired without just cause, and we’re going to look forward to making sure he’s restored,” McNesby told reporters after Ramsey announced Wednesday that Josey was being suspended for 30 days “with the intent to dismiss.”
So he’s being treated like a second-class citizen because apparently punching women is fine in this guys eyes. Of course if he was being treated like a first class citizen he’d be in handcuffs himself for the assault but it looks as though he’ll be dismissed but is unlikely to face any police action himself.
As for the woman she had all charges dropped due to a lack of evidence against her. Her lawyer though makes a very pertinent point, ‘I think we can all see if this wasn’t on video, my client wouldn’t even have an opportunity to defend herself.‘ Very very true. If a bystander hadn’t of caught this incident on film then there is little doubt she would still be facing charges and the officer who struck her would still be on duty ready to punch other people to whom he took a dislike.
Modern technology has uncovered many lies that police have told in this country and across the world. We are bred to have an innate trust of the police but the more incidents like these that we see (and go on to YouTube and you’ll find a lot) the more you wonder if these bad eggs are seriously impacting the public’s perception of the law?