Video shows Calif. police beating of student

[Roon]

SAN JOSE, Calif. – A cell phone video that shows police officers repeatedly hitting an unarmed university student with batons and a Taser gun has prompted a criminal investigation into the officers' conduct, a San Jose police spokesman said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091025/ap_on_re_us/us_police_beating_video;_ylt=AoMDf23ZTCoIaPYHZ17cBR90fNdF

[Gabi Hayes]

1. did one of their wives, while trespassing on his property, claim to have seen

him walking around without any clothes?

[ThomCat]

2. Of course there is a comment in the article about supposed

events that don't show up in the video that Ho must have done to justify the cops use of force.

Every time something like this happens, even when it is caught on video, we hear that "he most of done something do deserve the beat-down."

Geez! This is as clear a case of a cop gone viciously too far as you can get, yet the official response seems far more concerned with protecting the officer than with protecting Ho.

Other articles about this are talking about how the administration there has recently overturned efforts to implement transparency in cases like this, so that people would know why cases do or don't result in charges against the officer.

The same administration that is killing transparency in order to protect the police force is going to determine whether or not this video is sufficient grounds to prosecute the officer for police brutality? What happens if they decide not to prosecute? Will there again be no explanation and a very angry local Vietnamese community?

The end of this article says that when the officer kept beating Ho once he was in cuffs, then it became brutality. It was brutality long before then, and if the law lets cops keep beating people as long as they aren't yet in cuffs then clearly this shows that we have a broken system.

We need to purge that system. We really need serious, strong oversight of police departments, and real consequences for brutal police officers. And, we need to extend that oversight to any politicians who use their authority to protect cops from those consequences.