There is an excellent column in the L.A. Daily News about that LAPD video depicting an officer punching a suspect. I’m tempted to just quote it all, but of course I can’t do that. I’ll give you a generous slice of the beginning and hope it motivates you to read the rest:

THE Hollywood Division LAPD officers “caught on tape” provide the latest example of public outrage over police use of force. The increasing proliferation of video cameras guarantees that more and more police incidents will be captured. So it seems useful to provide some context about how such incidents are analyzed.

For the past 17 years, I’ve worked as an expert witness on civil and criminal use-of-force cases around this country, usually in favor of the police, sometimes not, sometimes with video, sometimes not.

The truth almost always lies deeper than the video.

When all the facts are included, there are a few glaringly obvious facts about this video.

First of all, there is not just one video. There are three videos of this incident posted on YouTube. One is 19 seconds long. One is five seconds long. One is one second short. They each capture a different part of the incident.

The videos were captured via someone’s cell-phone camcorder. You should wonder (I do) about why the two shorter videos published on YouTube are so short. And you should wonder why the longer video suddenly stopped just as the suspect’s right hand was approaching the gun holster of one of the officers.

Were the videos edited to someone’s advantage? Or was it just the luck of the draw and the vagaries of an amateur pushing buttons on the cell phone?

Second, newspapers have published excerpts of the officers’ own report of the arrest, in which they admit hitting the suspect in the head after describing the suspect’s alleged resistance to arrest. It’s very clear watching these videos that the officers are attempting to handcuff the suspect (one cuff is already on one wrist), but the suspect is not allowing that to happen.

Third, it is very interesting that the court commissioner who looked at the video (which was taken back in August) refused to dismiss the criminal case against the suspect. According to news reports, the commissioner said, “The issue here is not whether the officers had to use force. The question is whether or not the defendant used force in resisting the lawful arrest, and I find that he did resist, using force.”

As I did the other day, the writer goes on to discuss the applicable case of Graham v. Connor and the principles by which courts would analyze the use of force. The author concludes:

Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are right to express concern about the Hollywood incident because it’s obviously of concern to the public. But they are also right to withhold judgment until the various investigations play out.

The public – and the media – would do well to listen to them.

Very well said, with one quibble: I don’t agree with Bratton’s decision to publicly state that the video was “disturbing.” I’d rather see more withholding of judgment and less spouting off.

Read it all. The L.A. Times should run something like this.