All depends on how far the cop goes. When someone stops themselves from being the next Rodney King, it's just a matter of time before lesser police indiscretions are ruled as worthy of self-defense. Precedence FTW

yeah serious!

By that logic then there has been nothing similar to Rodney King since that event??? The "next rodney king" has happened, many times in fact.



Again, one only has to look at rodney king to find the answer to that equation VIDEO TAPE. Look at the reaction of the BART cops when they found out it was being video taped, was it to get the guy they murdered

medical attention??? No it was to get the video tape, so the only thing that would differentiate your guy "the hero who stood up against police oppression" and my guy "the guy who was lethally injected for killing a hero cop" is what???? VIDEO TAPE. The reality is the police forces around the nation have learned a lot from all of these cases, don't do it if you're being taped, if you do do it, get the tape.



Again, for those reading this please don't think I am indicating all cops are bad, or violent, etc, etc..... but let's all be realistic here, society has changed and gotten more violent (for the purpose of this discussion I need not theorize on why) police officers are no exception, they to have gotten more violent, mostly to respond to a more violent society, but also because they themselves have progressed in this direction (cops are human, just like us). Caught in the middle is the honest citizen, the person doing nothing wrong, this person is the one that should be protected by the constitution, the laws of the land so to speak.



So you've got this situation where the minority of both cops and citizens are turning violent, the cop sees all citizens as violent because those are the ones he fears and to assess the citizen as a friend and have him be otherwise could be fatal, the flip side here is of course the same for the citizen, he sees a more and more aggressive police force and even though it is the minority of the officers, he becomes fearful of all of them, it only takes one violent cop to put joe sixpack behind bars or worse in a coffin, so fears all cops as anyone of them could pose a threat to his freedom or even worse his life.

That video is troubling, another cop that needs to quit/get fired.. Attitude out of control..

Makes you wonder what they're teaching at the Academy. Where's Mahoney when you need him?

The additional violence could well be a result of tension between police and civilians. There's been plenty of Rodney Kings, I'll give you that and everyone knows it. My guy isn't someone who does **** against the law and evades police though. We all know the "Oops, they just went a bit too far doing their jobs." excuse. It's the "unusual" situations where the person does NOTHING wrong where precedence is needed.



The problem here isn't that there's two sides who are equally right. (Note that I'm not worried about criminals, they're a separate group. When you **** with the law, ****'s obviously gonna hit the fan.) There is just civilians who are obeying the law and police who are breaking it. Now I'm not saying police should be slapping high fives with everyone on the street. I don't care if the police are "nice", I care that they do their jobs. I get that police are human also but if you can't switch it off, do society a favour and quit.



This is an issue SO far beyond the gray area it isn't even funny. Police act like animals and blame it on the fact they sometimes deal with animals. Police then issue an apology (at best) perpetuating the behaviour. Not rocket science what needs to change.

No argument from me, i was just trying to make sure i didnt get accused of calling all cops bad.

OOh El Paso has some unhappy curves for truckers...

Leave it to Repu to give me an urging for tacoz!