Briefly, a man was taking video of a police response to something across the street from his house. An officer saw him filming, told him to stop, and when the man refused, the officer approached him, beat him, beat his camera, and then arrested him for obstructing a police officer.
You can watch the video at either of the links I provided.
An Internal Affairs Bureau today found the officer guilty of violating department policies, although according to the story it’s possible he might face no punishment at all from the police department.
Follow up: if he did not break any laws, are we comfortable with police having the ability to act like this, or should we do something to make sure they don’t treat people like this?
Well, I thought so too, but I thought it was curious that the stories make no mention of breaking laws, only of violating department policies, which isn’t necessarily the same thing.
That would be my guess, since it seems like he would have nothing to gain and everything to lose by making the officer believe he didn’t live in his own house and is currently on his own property. I couldn’t tell which property Officer Collins was referring to when he asked, but it seems most likely to me that it was a simple misunderstanding, which Officer Collings then escalated into something insane.
I think Officer Collings should have clarified his question by saying something like “So you don’t live in that house? That house behind you? The one whose lawn you’re standing on?” and if Mr. Crooks (unfortunate last name there) continued to say no, asked him why he’s on the property if he doesn’t live there. Later on in the video (after the violence) Officer Collings and another officer tell Mr. Crooks (unfortunate last name there) that it matters because if it’s not his property, he’s trespassing, but that would only be true if he was there without permission, I believe. The whole thing seems bizarre, and it sure looks unjustified to me from the video, but I’m not a lawyer or a police officer.
In contrast to this, most of my interactions with Las Vegas and surrounding area police have been positive, even when I was getting a ticket or in an accident.
The officer might have, it is highly likely the DA didn’t feel there was sufficient evidence to go forward with charges against the officer though. A half competent defense attorney can introduce an insurmountable mountain of reasonable doubt as to what that video shows, since we do not see the action we have no idea what is going on physically. All it shows definitively is that the officer perhaps improperly removed a citizen’s video camera and kicked it…I’m not sure what crime you can successfully prosecute on that evidence.
I will also say the victim in the video is ridiculous. I’m sorry but is there no decorum? I understand it’s not fun to be beat up a little bit by a cop but I have enough self respect I wouldn’t be yelling like a banshee.
If you’re going to jerk a police officer’s chain, even if you are 100% in the right, you do not lie to him. He was asked point blank if he lived there and he said “No”, thus implying that he was at the minimum trespassing.
Saying “You’re in a world of hurt now” is not a crime. And no, his superficial injuries are not evidence of being beaten criminally by the police officer. A police officer can make an unlawful arrest and still be lawfully acting in subduing a resisting person. Many States do not give you the right to use violence to resist an officer who believes they are making an lawful arrest, and in all States the preferred venue for contesting the legality of an arrest is in the court room, not the street.
It would be very logical to assume a defense attorney would say that Collings was not beating Crooks, but instead was trying to subdue an unruly person he was placing under arrest and in the process of subduing the resisting person, the person suffered injuries and abrasions.
Don’t look at this from the Recreational Outrage perspective but more from the devil’s advocate position, a DA is never going to go up against a cop in a courtroom unless he knows he can win. Would you know you could win in this case? I’m not a lawyer but I don’t think this video is nearly the absolute conclusive evidence you think it is, and I do not believe it would be very easy to convict officer Collings, so even if he did commit a crime I think it understandable the DA did not file charges.
Based on the video and the story, my belief is the officer beat the guy up out of anger and was totally unjustified in his actions. People are not convicted in courts of law based on what I believe based on my looky-loo observation, and I do not know that enough is here to actually demonstrate to twelve people that Collings committed a crime. As a police officer he will have good counsel at trial and it is always going to be difficult to get a jury of 12 that to the man will be willing to convict a cop, even one who deserves it.
I didn’t say it was wrong, just indecorous. I mean, once you’re already down on the ground it’s pretty obvious all the screaming in the world isn’t going to change shit, just lay there and wait to get taken to the station. It’s obvious other officers were already there at that point so screaming served no purpose, who else was going to come to help him? Random neighbors?
No, but the way it’s said is, to me, a threat of violence.
Well, this goes to something I have issue with, namely, the way that officers are now trained to state repeatedly, as they are beating someone (as Officer Collings did in the video), “stop resisting” and thus they are cleared of wrongdoing. I think we’ve had discussion about this here before, and IIRC, anything other than active cooperation is legally seen as actively resisting, and IMO that’s wrong.
But is that also true if the arrest itself was unlawful, as seems to be the case here?
I think you’re making conclusions without any evidence one way or the other about what the DA thought. There’s no mention made of whether or not the DA has even seen this video or looked at it as a possible case.
I agree that based solely on the video, it might be difficult to get a conviction. But there’s also the arrest report (did the officer falsify the arrest report?) and other evidence and factors we might not know about that could be brought up at trial.
Random neighbors might have turned on their video cameras, and if the situation had escalated further, they would have had it on tape. There was that case a couple of years back where an officer in California had pulled over two guys in a car for possible DUI and due to the shouting and noise, a neighbor turned his camera on a couple of minutes before the officer shot one the men even tho they were both on the ground and following his orders.
I’ll be indecorous any day if it means calling attention to a bad situation. Perhaps you thought Kitty Genovese shouldn’t have screamed?
It doesn’t matter if it’s a cop doing the beating or just some random person. In fact, if it’s a cop, you should probably scream louder, since most people’s reaction at first is going to be “oh well, it’s a cop just making an arrest”. Without calling attention to what is going on, how would anyone realize that it might be a bad cop doing something wrong?
And as you note, the courts and public are almost always wiling to side with the police. Without some evidence on your side, how would you even start to prove that you weren’t the one in the wrong?
I like how the officer yells ‘stop resisting’, don’t they do that to CYA if they are brought up on an assault charge (by claiming there is resistance even when there isn’t any).
From seeing that video, that cop seems like a power tripping thug with the way he acts (breaking the guys camera, ridiculing him, etc). So hopefully he is fired and someone who can handle the job of police officer in a responsible manner is hired instead. Ideally.
It’s certainly possible that Mr. Crooks misunderstood the question. I don’t understand why Officer Collings didn’t clarify his question before acting.
Also, even if he had been answering truthfully and accurately, why would it imply trespassing at a minimum? Plenty of people who don’t live at my house have been on my front lawn, sometimes even watching police or fire truck activity, without it being trespassing – they’re invited guests.
If I recall correctly, the OP has a pretty big ax to grind about the cops, so this entire debate is tainted IMO.
The rules I teach my children are pretty simple: Always be honest with the cops, and always do what they say, as fast as possible. Any wrong doing can and will be dealt with in court, but in the off chance you get one of the small percentage of bad cops, it’s better to be in the right and beaten wrongfully than to be in the wrong and have it be a “legal action”.
I have no axe to grind about cops in general; several of my family members are cops and I firmly believe that we need a police force to be able to have a reasonably peaceful society. I’ve argued both for and against police actions on the SDMB.
I have a big axe to grind about authority figures who abuse their position and against people in general who violate oaths they have willingly sworn.
