This film is disturbing. According to the New York Times piece on the incident, a police officer body-slammed a cyclist and then arrested him for assault, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. Someone taped what actually happened and exposed the officer for being an abusive, lying, ex-football asshole looking to crack some heads for kicks.

A New York City police officer was stripped of his gun and badge on Monday after an amateur video surfaced on the Internet showing him pushing a bicyclist to the ground in Times Square during a group ride on Friday evening.

The cyclist, identified in court papers as Christopher Long, 29, was taking part in a monthly ride, called Critical Mass, that often draws hundreds of riders. In a criminal complaint against Mr. Long, the officer, identified in the court documents as Patrick Pogan of the Midtown South precinct, says that the cyclist rode straight into him.

According to the video, the officer clearly attacked this kid.

Mr. Radhuber said Mr. Long had not been weaving in traffic, as Officer Pogan alleged. “There was no traffic behind us — there was no traffic to weave in and out of,” Mr. Radhuber said. “The police officer looked to see who he was going to pick off.”

There were no cars in the video and Long was clearly riding along like the other cyclists. So the moral is, justice can only be served as long as everyone is video-taping everyone else.

Today’s Democracy Now! has great commentary on it - skip ahead and stop around the 25 min mark.

Oh, and did I mention the cop is only 22 years old?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 12:55 pm and is filed under bikes!, military/cops. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.