I often think the cops are abusing their authority in these situation, but I don’t see it in this case.
1. Cop takes the guy to his hood.
2. The guy gets away from him.
3. So the cop takes him down and hits him.
I thought the cop was quite restrained given the guy got away from him when he had him on the hood of the car.
Now like everyone else, I don’t exactly see why the cop decided to search or maybe arrest him. But sorry even if the cop is wrong to search/arrest you, you don’t get to resist which the guy clearly did.
The video is playing at high speed. Because of the pole, and because things are moving so quickly, we can't quite see what actually happened on the hood of the car.
Police seem to be very quick to grab people and physically push them around. When you're dealing with someone mentally off (because of illness or drugs), I'm not sure that's the best first approach.
I'd guess that someone who is impaired is going to react more instinctually to being physically coerced than clear-headedly. It's less resisting arrest than resisting being injured.