Can't anyone write a news story anymore? A disputed "fact" is an assertion. Why did the police spokesman quote witnesses instead of the officers, and that's horrible sentence structure. The opening clause leads the reader to believe that the reporter spoke to the witnesses. The reporter should have pressed the police spokesman to either characterize or refuse to characterize officer reports of their own actions. This would have led to a cleaner report, "The officers reported that Gale refused to cooperate, and state that witnesses corroborated the report."
This one doesn't pass the smell test. I think a little more investigation of officer conduct is in order. I'm not saying they did anything wrong, but if the other patron had no connection to the suspect, I'd look for other customers to get a better accounting.
Ya think? Something is obviously missing in the story. One clue is that the CEC manager called the cops. He's either unrealistically afraid of confrontation or the customer was rude and unruly to begin with.