No one thinks that a person in custody, and in hand-cuffs, ought to be beaten up. Just as with a prisoner of war, civilized protocol calls for a non-violent treatment. But just as with prisoners of war, there is sometimes a momentary lapse among those who have just been in the heat of battle with those now in captivity. And sometimes there are human lapses. It is not always easy to go from a desperate battle, to smiles and offers of smokes and drinks and warm, dry, bedding. Perhaps you will relate your own battlefield experiences, if you take exception to that statement.
According to the accounts that I have heard, the cop was wounded in the skirmish with this "victim," immediately before the successful cuffing. While the cop should be disciplined for his clear breach of protocol in continuing the violence, there is nothing in this incident which ought to justify enriching one who, immediately before he was inappropriately struck, was engaging in lawless conduct calcualted to provoke. It would be like awarding damages to a burglar who was shot breaking into one's bedroom, or the insane verdict in the Bronx against Bernard Goetz, some years back. The kid should not benefit because he provoked this assault. And the Officer should not have his career destroyed, because of an inappropriate punch. Discipline him, by all means. Do not destroy him.
Finally, it is a shame that Attorney General Ashcroft has allowed himself to get drawn into this local matter. Surely the proper parties to investigate and discipline the errant officer are in his own department. This should not be an FBI matter, and probably would not have been in the days when J. Edgar Hoover operated the Department with a firm hand, but a sense both of its importance in its proper fields and also on the limitations on the extent of what were its proper fields.
Sometimes the hardest thing for political office holders to learn is that they are not to use their power to solve every problem under the sun--only those actually entrusted to them. But that is at least as important a lesson as the one which tells officers to stop the violence, once the prisoner is pacified.
The only reason that this minor local abuse of a prisoner is getting this attention is because of the Leftist slant of the media. Otherwise, this would only be a page six story--if that--in the L.A. papers, and no where else. There was probably far more serious and grivous violence that same day in every large and medium sized city in America; but reporting it served no Leftwing purpose, so it went largely unnoticed.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Amen to that!