YouTube video prompts probe of LA police beating

THE power of video website YouTube.com is shockingly clear.

Its 20-second clip of a man being repeatedly punched in the face by Los Angeles policemen has just prompted an FBI investigation of the 11 Aug incident.

This comes nearly two months after a Superior Court commissioner described the police officers’ conduct as ‘more than reasonable’.

The YouTube clip, shot by the man’s neighbour using a handphone camera, shows suspected gang member William Cardenas, 24, being held down by the two policemen.

The clip appears to contradict some statements in the police officers’ report.

For example, it said that one of the officers hit Cardenas after ‘the suspect continued to grab at (the other officer’s) belt’, but the video shows that his hands are nowhere near the policeman’s belt before he is hit.

According to The Independent, the clip shows Cardenas lying motionless as one officer squeezes his neck with his leg and punches him repeatedly in the face.

The suspect is reportedly seen flailing his arms and gasping: ‘I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!’

He is handcuffed after the beating.

FACIAL BRUISES

According to his lawyer Kwaku Duren, Cardenas, who has been charged with resisting arrest, was later treated in hospital for two black eyes, a split lip and facial bruises.

Cop Watch LA, a police watchdog group that got the video from Cardenas’ family, posted the clip on YouTube on 18 Oct.

As of Friday, the clip had been viewed more than 155,000 views.

Police chief William J Bratton described the video as ‘disturbing’, but said it represented only a fraction of what took place, though the Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the officers’ conduct.

YouTube and similar video sites are increasingly carrying videos that purport to detail wrongdoing by the police.

A search on YouTube for the term ‘police brutality’ revealed more than 500 videos, including ones that claim to show police violence in the US, Egypt and Hungary.

One of the most famous videos in past years, and one which the present case echoes, was that of the 1991 Rodney King beating.

The acquittal of four officers involved sparked off riots in Los Angeles.

There may be a downside, though, to the proliferation of such videos.

Legal observers said the public had become somewhat desensitised to questionable police tactics caught on tape because such clips have become more prevalent in the past decade.

However, despite years of reform partly brought about after the King beating, one civil rights lawyer, Ms Connie Rice, believed that many officers still had not got the message about appropriate police behaviour with a suspect.

Said Ms Rice: ‘About a third of the force believes that if you are not in total compliance during an arrest, they get to use a level of force that to me and the public looks excessive.’ - AP.