Some further notes on the video showing the LAPD officer punching a suspect:

Jack Dunphy’s promised article on the incident is up, and I recommend reading it all. In it, Dunphy recalls an incident from his own career as a patrol officer, in which an apparently routine traffic stop turned into a street fight when the driver emerged from the car concealing a semiautomatic firearm behind his back. The firearm fell to the ground when Dunphy grabbed his arm; the man dove for it and the officers fought — a fight that ended when Dunphy managed to crack the suspect in the head with a sap. Dunphy says:

There was a single witness to the incident, a woman sitting on her porch across the street. She had seen everything, she told our sergeant, and she said we had beaten the man “for no reason at all.” The sergeant asked her if she had seen the gun the man had dropped. She had not, and she agreed that this added information changed her interpretation of what she had witnessed.

Just as the woman failed to see the gun from across the street, if she had recorded the incident with a video camera the gun probably wouldn’t have been visible on the tape, either. I can envision such a tape being played, over and over and over, on the news and on the Internet, and I can imagine being pilloried in the media just as the two Hollywood officers in the current tape are being pilloried today. And I can imagine myself saying, just as the two Hollywood cops must be saying, just as cops all over the LAPD are saying, Why bother?

There can be no better illustration of the dangers of jumping to a conclusion based on incomplete information. And that’s all I recommend in the punching case: not that we all assume the officer’s actions were in clear compliance, but that we wait for all the facts, and not make up our minds on the basis of a selected portion of video.

I don’t know whether the officer committed a crime, used excessive force, or was out of policy. I don’t know all the facts, and neither do you.

Also, last night commenter steve passed along news that the suspect entered a plea yesterday to a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest, for three years’ probation, time served, and a small fine. I express no opinion here about that deal. For one thing, I don’t have the information that was available to the folks who made the decision to offer the deal.

The L.A. Times story on the plea bargain has this passage:

Asked whether the video had led to the deal, Deputy Dist. Atty Michael Yglecias said: “I would be lying if I said it didn’t. Obviously it was part of the evidence we considered.”

By the way, I am skeptical that the question asked Yglecias was “Did the video lead to the deal?” It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the question was something more like: “Did the video have something to do with the deal?” Those are different questions that have different answers. Every piece of evidence always has something to do with a plea bargain; that’s not the same as saying that a single piece of evidence led to the plea bargain. This is a mere suspicion on my part; I haven’t talked to Yglecias about it and don’t intend to. (Full disclosure: Yglecias is my former boss, and a man I respect.)

There is no indication in the story (or any other story I’ve seen) as to what happened to the suspect’s warrant for receiving stolen property, which is why he was pursued in the first place. I haven’t seen a story yet that says whether that warrant was pre- or post-conviction. If any reader sees further information as to what happened to that warrant, please leave it in the comments.

In researching the plea bargain last night, I ran across a story with an interesting piece of information that I hadn’t seen previously:

In his testimony, Schlegel said he left out of his report the “three times” Farrell struck Cardenas because he was calling dispatch and didn’t see the blows struck. After watching the video in court, however, Schlegel testified he had seen Farrell hit Cardenas. The video, however, clearly shows Farrell striking Cardenas five times.

I had wondered about that. When I watched the video, I noticed that Schlegel was on the radio when Farrell administered the first three strikes, and may not have seen them. I didn’t raise the issue before, because I didn’t know whether Schlegel had seen the first three blows or not. I also assumed that the officers had discussed the number of strikes before the report was finalized. But perhaps they didn’t.

The use of the word “however” in the quoted paragraph is completely inappropriate. Schlegel easily could have missed the first three punches, and truthfully testified that he saw Farrell hit Cardenas (the suspect). There were two punches that Schlegel clearly did see.

So now it’s now off to civil court for Cardenas, the suspect who entered the plea. He has millions to collect, you know.