Or maybe, as Cuban Leaf pointed out above, they picked the wrong charge to slap him with.
Civil Rights, as well as hate and similar crimes, are much harder to prove than simpler ones like battery. Unfortunately those are usually the charges various advocacy groups demand get leveled.
It highlights the flaws in the practical effect of those laws. It also illustrates their self fulfilling prophesy nature: when they don’t result in convictions it serves to reinforce that there is a problem that can only be solved with additional laws of a similar nature.
With the historic application of “Civil Rights” being what it has been and mainly used as a DoJ tool to subvert local legal proceedings, it doesn’t specifically mean that it HAS to be about race, does it?
The fat bald LEO was pissed he had to run so much and exert more energy than he’d used in a lifetime to get that ba$tard and he NEEDED to kick his ass. It is also odd that all of the ‘officers’ thought they needed to kick the perp, too. While he was subdued - while he was laid out on the ground - while he was under police ‘custody’.....