When Will People Learn?

For those of you who don’t know, it’s the 21st century. And if things like Rodney King, Britney Spears putting her baby on her car, and celebrity sex tapes haven’t taught you anything, let me: everything, yes, EVERYTHING you do has a good chance of being video taped and ending up on YouTube. This is especially true if you’re a civil servant, celebrity, or otherwise notable or conspicuous member of society. Last weekend at the UH / Washington football game, fans rushed the field with about 3 seconds left, and the cops there in their riot gear tackled and zip tied them. Except for one cop, who tackled a guy, allegedly punched him and pinned him to the ground. And, of course, it’s on YouTube, and looks bad for the cop, and is all over the news with allegations of police brutality. Read on to see the video and read the rest of this.

Firstly, here’s the video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KY7QglsbmQg

Edit: Shortly after posting this, the video went offline at YouTube, and was no longer on Miles Kreisberg, the original poster’s YouTube page. A few days later, it has returned, but is not embeddable on this site.

Is the cop actually beating the guy outside of his standard measures of force? Possibly. It looks like he’s throwing in some punches in there. If that is in fact what he was doing, that’s a bad idea, because, again, everything IS being recorded and WILL end up on YouTube. I read a statistic one time saying that at any given time in London one is being recorded by (I think it was) between 3 and 10 surveillance cameras. I don’t know if this is actually true, but I think in this age we all should assume that out in public we’re always being video taped or otherwise visually documented. Especially cops, who were severely outnumbered by excited, rowdy, and at the time cop-hating fans. I think the video was set to private as it is under investigation, but I went ahead and, in an effort to both go the extra mile for you guys and to bring my point home about assuming somebody is watching, found you another YouTube video of the SAME incident from a slightly different angle. And the funny thing is, from this angle, it doesn’t look much like police brutality at all. But then again, the punching arm of the cop is obstructed by another cop. My point is, watch what you do. Always. Especially if a lot of people know you or you’re in a position that a little bit of controversy, correctly interpreted or not, could potentially seriously fuck up your life forever.

[youtube YYi7oP0YMso]

P.S. And for added fun, check out Scotty’s video from the postgame rush that I found on myspace when I was trying to find more UH police brutality video. See, even if you slip and fall it’s caught on tape.