FBI Investigates Mpls PD...again

So you're a MPLS cop and you pull over a hefty black guy who doesn't immediately do what you say -- what do you do? Do you ask him again, or do you claim he punched you despite video evidence to the contrary and then call in 8 of your buddies to beat him so badly he needs to be hospitalized?

Well, I can tell you what the training manual says, or you can watch the video yourself.

What's most interesting about this incident is how the back-up officers fly into the scene and immediately start punching and kicking the poor guy without any knowledge of the situation. In fact, all they know is there was a call for help and when they got there, they saw a man face down in a snow bank with a cop sitting on top of him. Not exactly a scenario that calls you to get down on your knees and start punching him directly in the crotch, as you can clearly see one officer do.

Of course, all charges were dropped against Mr. Jenkins (the victim); not necessarily because he was innocent of the charges, but probably more because he had just been severely beaten for no reason while it was caught on camera.

You can argue that Mr. Jenkins was being uncooperative (though explaining why a Black man in Minneapolis would be justifiably wary of any police contact is an entirely different post), but the force used on him was still clearly inappropriate. For starters, there was no reason he needed to be pulled out of the car at all. But even if you grant that was necessary for some unknown reason, there's simply no defense for the actions of the back up. All that was needed was for one officer to grab his legs and then he was fully subdued. Put some cuffs on him and leave. What makes this so bad is not that he was beaten so severely (though that is really, really bad), but it's the fact that a single punch never needed to be thrown and the situation could have been resolved faster, easier, and far less illegally.

Now there may be some disciplinary action taken (the FBI has agreed to investigate), but seeing as how this seems to happen pretty much once or twice a year here, I doubt much will actually change. I just hope the MPLS PD remembers this the next time they wonder so loudly why the public distrusts police officers...