5.30.2010

LAPD cops attack bicyclists at Hollywood Critical Mass

At a Critical Mass in Hollywood, a rider stopped to record police abusing bicyclists.

At 0:25 a police officer can be seen deliberately kicking hard as a bicyclist goes past, apparently trying to knock him off his bike. After the cameraman shouted, "Oh, oh, oh! What the $%^& was that for?", the police came across the street and tackled the cameraman.



The LAPD is investigating.

8 comments:

SarahB said...

Having been married to an LAPD office, I can assure you an AI investigation is no joke...in fact police are guilty until proven innocent. Unless the officer can PROVE (not just say) the bicyclist had something in his hand, was swerving toward him, disobaying an on order to ride further away, etc, his career is over. I'm sure the rocks and frozen bottles of urine that were thrown at officers that night...or the spitting...were not reported by bystanders with cameras.

Anonymous said...

And yet the whole squad comes to arrest the guy.

Standard operating procedure, and it only goes wrong if there happens to be a camera around.

SarahB said...

OMG...really? Everyone has a freakin camera...EVERYONE. PD is always being recorded by cell phones, cam corders, and on-car cameras. This guy wasn't singled out for his camera. If the police were really that corrupt, there would be no surviving video.

Anonymous said...

You seem rational and right-minded, so I don't want to pick a fight. However, it's pretty telling that this cop would be willing to do that while standing around with a bunch of other cops.

...who, sure enough, don't seem to think much about his kicking a random bicyclist, but are plenty ready to tackle and arrest the guy who filmed it.

I've seen too much of this to not think it's endemic.

qs said...

One time I got pulled over and the cop told me that I was refusing to pull over and was evading an officer while screaming at me.

I just told him I was sorry and said that I didn't think I was doing that.

He just gave me the speeding ticket but he was in a pissed off mood.

Why was he threatening me with these felonies if he wasn't even serious about the evading thing...

Unknown said...

Made local tv news yesterday...bad people do bad things regularly...good people screw up also...

ProfoundSkeptic said...

I'm not defending the officer here but the video does appear to show another officer right behind the cyclist. Is there any chance he was evading that other officer? I have no idea about the camerman getting tackled but it does appear that he kept the camera. Just trying to keep an open mind.

Anonymous said...

If the cops attacked him because they were being video taped... why did they give the guy back a working camera??
Dosen't make sense to me. Maybe they didn't even realize he was taping. And took him down for another reason.

Happy Super Tuesday!