The description of the events makes this sound like there was a rough arrest followed by a subsequent illicit raid of a bystanders home at some point in the future - like “hey let’s beat up this guy, and then tomorrow night let’s go raid his friends house without a warrant to cover our rears.”
I guess this makes me some kind of cop sympathizer, but after looking at the second recording, I don’t think it shows some grand offense and conspiracy on the part of the cops.
Right up to where they apparently destroyed the cellphone memory card, I don’t see anything here that’s even particularly newsworthy.
There’s some dispute over a car that’s being towed.
A big guy is about to get cuffs put on him and he resists - pushes back from the car against the cop behind him who is trying to lean him over before cuffing him.
Big guy resisting arrest is then grabbed by the cop, flipped back over to the ground and restrained by multiple police.
His brother, shouting at the cops, continues to encroach on the officers restraining the other guy. He’s moved back to the sidewalk, and comes closer as soon as the cop leaves. He comes onto the road, and is walked back to the landing at the top of his stairs by the cop. He comes back and again, as soon as he hits the street, the cop comes after him.
At this point, he’s running away from the cops. (Cops who from his opinion are abusers, fine, but really, when does running away from the cops ever end well?)
Can a cop follow you into a house without a warrant if you are eluding them? I don’t know, but I’d assume so.
Then 50 million other cops who arrive on the scene see an officer chasing a subject. Do you think that when the officer stopped in the car before chasing the subject that he said “Hey, I’m going after a perp who was recording a rough arrest to get his recordings” and that everyone else decided to pile on? Or just that they arrive on the scene and see a fellow cop actively chasing someone and do what they’re trained to do and assist? (I imagine this is why only one of them was eventually arrested?)
While the swarm (and holy toledo where did they come from) is going into the house, the one guy is left with the big guy on the ground.
I don’t know what happened right before he unleashes what the local news channel called hammer hits, but the cop doesn’t keep at it. If the guy is trying to get up, or trying to move, or not following instructions, the cop who is now alone needs to keep him restrained. I’d hate to be hit like that, but it doesn’t look like abuse.
So, from what’s in the video, there’s one cop who chased after someone into his home when apparently he shouldn’t (since he was fired), and that’s a problem.
Inside the house, according to this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/family-sues-omaha-police-department_n_4563757.html there’s a ton of other crappy stuff that happened … a cover-up regarding the first cop taking evidence without a warrant, roughing up a handicapped elderly aunt, and all that is a problem, but what’s in the video above is not the issue. The rest of it is a problem, but maybe it could have been avoided by registering your cars, not resisting arrest, not shouting at the police and not ignoring multiple attempts to keep bystanders at a safe distance. Oh, and also not fleeing an officer that is pursuing you.
I take the statements on that HuffPo page with a number of grains of salt. “A parking ticket turned into officers storming into my house and me being thrown to the ground and put in a chokehold”
That’s a deceptively loaded sentence. You could break it into two sentances like this that don’t sound so inflammatory: “Unregistered cars owned by my family were being towed and after failing to follow police instructions I resisted arrest and was restrained” plus “My brother was filming my incident while shouting at the police who were restraining me. He failed to follow their instructions to keep a safe distance multiple times and attempted to elude police by running into my house”
