Posted on 07/30/2008 1:28:56 PM PDT by BGHater
A video showing a New York City police officer knocking a bicyclist to the ground has become a YouTube hit and cost the officer his badge and gun.
An anonymous bystander posted the 70-second video over the weekend. In two days, it was viewed over 260,000 times. Viewers had rated it five stars and provided 647 reviews as of Tuesday.
The video shows bicycle riders in Critical Mass pedaling through the streets of Times Square on Friday. The footage shows the incident first in real-time, then in slow motion.
The officer stood in the street as some cyclists passed by, then walked briskly toward the sidewalk as another cyclist approached. The bicyclist attempted to swerve out of the officer's way but the officer slammed against him and pushed him to the ground. The person who shot the video appears to be about 30 feet away and, although the sound of the bicycle crashing was clear, the video did not pick up any verbal exchange between the officer and the bicyclist.
Critical Mass is a group that rides through city streets monthly. Some people claim they do so in protest of or to draw attention to unfriendly bicycling policies. The rides take place in cities around the world. New York City police frequently clash with members of the group, who often videotape their rides. Police claim that some members of the group are overly aggressive by deliberately slowing traffic and harassing drivers.
In the latest incident, the officer was placed on desk duty pending the outcome of an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney. Bystanders said the officer's behavior was unprovoked, but a police report said the cyclist provoked the officer.
The cyclist, Christopher Long, of Hoboken, N.J., was handcuffed, arrested, and charged with attempted assault, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct for allegedly obstructing traffic.
He is due in court Sept. 5.
Police arrested more than 250 members of Critical Mass during the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden in 2004. Though members have asserted the arrests infringe on their rights to free speech, a federal judge ruled that local government has the right to regulate the rides.
In recent years, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken several steps to make the city more green and bicycle friendly, including adding bicycle lanes to several avenues and streets and announcing entire avenue closures to free up routes for bicyclists.
I am an avid cyclist and often avoid related threads as there are often a lot of FR bike-haters (but probably out numbered by the cop-haters). But I have to admit to taking a real dislike to these “Critical Mass” idiots. I wouldn’t mind if the cops pushed every one of them to the ground and hauled them all off to jail or the hospital (and then gave me any of the high-end bikes left behind).
But, on the up side - the little guy is now seven and starts his first year of football next week for the Mineola Chiefs (Great Neck doesn't have a team - big surprise).
Read the very next post I made. I already took back the comment: whatever the striped markings, it was certainly NOT a crosswalk.
ON THE OTHER HAND:
The slower he was moving, the more inexcusable his behavior was. If he was quickly cycling, one might expect he might barely be able to swerve out of the cop’s way. If he were traveling so slowly, he’d be able to stop his bike, or make a much more significant turn. But instead he just barely misses the officer, if he misses the officer at all. No bicyclist should EVER pass so closely by a pedestrian.
Even if he said that to the cop, that doesn’t warrant, nor is it legal, for the cop to hurl him off his bike to the curb like that.
The bicyclist could easily have been killed by smashing his head to the pavement like that.
And then he LIES about it, inventing a whole bunch of lies to put the cyclist in jail for 26 hours!
In a just world that cop would spend the next ten years in jail for assault and battery.
Ed
“It looked as if he was waiting for that particular cyclist.”
Yeah, quite a few other cyclists had gone by w/o incident. The cop definitely picked that guy out, crowded him towards the curb then accelerated into the body check, otherwise the cyclist clears him with no problem. Either the cop saw something he didn’t like or he was radioed about something the guy had done earlier. The cop singled this guy out early.
It's done so casually and so quickly it looks like that was the whole reason for getting him off of his bike... to steal it!!!
You should be ashamed of spouting off before you read post 23 where dangus took back what he said after reviewing the video again.
While I don’t condone the Officer’s behavior, I can understand his frustration. Critical Mass are a bunch of rogue Cyclists (liberal social and political protestors) who basically, en mass (sometimes hundreds, even thousands), gather together on their bikes, taking over the Streets of Manhattan whenever they feel like it effectively shutting down traffic and movement for blocks. They give no notice to the City, the Police or the Public.
I don’t usualy refer to wikipedia but for what it’s worth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass
$250,000 at least. Easy money from the City of New York...Why can’t I get beat up by a cop for no reason and have someone tape it and put it on Youtube? Luck doesn’t know my address.
Then the taxpayers of NYC should DEMAND that their police department not put thugs on a power trip on the street with a badge and gun.
I don’t think the person ran off with his bike. It looked to me as if the person was taking the bike to keep for him. They were protestors and probably looking out for each other. That’s all that was about I think.
As for the cop ... don’t know the whole story of course but...he DEFINITELY was looking for that biker. Also, the biker DID veer to the left to try and avoid the cop. According to the video the cop definitely pushed and knocked the biker off his bike. Not a good move.
Either way people have to learn to keep their hands off other people. If the cop was after the biker it doesn’t seem to me that the biker would have been hard to find or apprehend.
Need to know more.
Notice how the article fails to elaborate on the typical tactics of Critical Mass riders like “corking” where they purposely will block traffic and entire intersections for minutes during rush hour traffic.
And NYC is nothing, Seattle and SF critical mass events are always filled with punks spiting on and damaging cars.
Yes it has.
I wish it were just PC.
Cop haters here are a dime a dozen; and they are quick to judge guilt on the basis on a single MSM report. Or on the basis of a video set up and shot by the "victim's" group.
How bright is that?
The Rider was most probably a "corker" whose job it was to halt traffic at a red light so the mass could travel through it once the mass had passed the cop attempted to stop him for what he breaking the traffic laws by shutting down the flow of traffic.
The cop was well within the law to attempt to arrest him for what he had done.
There is more to this than what is seen in the video. Both police officers are in the street seemingly disinterested looking to their left until this bicyclist comes into view. It is clear both officers have an interest in this particular bicyclist and both officers move toward the cyclist before the one officer slams the guy.
What not seen in the video did this cyclist do that caused the TWO police officers to stop looking to the left and center their attention on this guy to the right?
Don’t you just love it when some people will go through all sorts of contortions and whatifs when defending the actions of thug cops, just because they are cops. As if the act of saying something offensive to a cop is against the law and warrants an assault.
I don’t know what is more disturbing, the fact that there are more and more cases of these thug cops, or the fact that there are actually people who see little, if anything, wrong with their actions.
Possibly, but if it was a friend, don't you think she(?) would have been a little more concerned with him than his bike? She didn't even look at him! He could have been lying there with his brains on the sidewalk and she wouldn't know anything about it.
And shouldn't she have spoken to him and said something like "I'll take care of your bike, skippy!" or something before disappearing into the night with it? She's gone and she doesn't look back.
I think she saw the commotion and thought, "Free bike! Fascist pigs!"
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