What is overlooked on all of these threads is that the law applies with no less force to the police as it does to the original defendant. When a law enforcement officer breaks the law and assaults or kills the perpetrator of another crime, they become a law breaker and the perpetrator a victim. There are still two sets of perpetrators and victims, they have just switched roles for the first and second offense, but the offense of the officer is much worse than an ordinary assault because (1) the officer has been trained and knows better, (2) we have entrusted the officer with extraordinary powers, (3) the lawless behavior of even a few law enforcement officers destroys the trust society has in law enforcement, and (4) an officer may reasonably expect not to be caught most of the time.
I see a beating like witnessed in this video as no less culpable than if the officers had reached into the man's back pocket and stolen his wallet.
When I trained bouncers my first rule was that nobody hit a customer.
The second rule was nobody went to jail. I've had customers come to me
saying the bouncers should've beat the person who hit one of them, but
had the bouncer hit that customer there would've been a different tone
about the excessive brutality which my bouncers were fully capable of.
We handled it tactfully, for instance if the customer had to be placed
into a headlock to be walked out the door, a few chairs in the way would
do the work for them, or a table in extreme circumstances.
But I always told the supporting customer who wanted the bouncers
to fight back, that the bouncers had my full backing to beat the hell
out of anybody they thought deserved it. That wasn't true but the illusion
was there for word to get around, and I rarely had trouble in the club.
And we also had the full backing of the customers when trouble started.
What happened in this case is similar, we sit back and say "They should've
beat the hell out of that guy", but when it does happen the demeanor changes
to excessive force and the police lose their backing of the public. The guy
did deserve the beat down, but seeing it actually happen makes those
armchair Police Captains cringe, and turns them into mushy activists.