[Jeff Higgins]

Why are police so terrified of any oversight outside of their own little clique? The rest of us undergo and accept such scrutiny in our professional lives as a matter of course. The common complaint from their side is that the rest of us just don't understand police work. So be it - but we do understand, and can recognize, common thuggery and abuse when we see it. I think that is what they are afraid of.

Like I said above, we have historically given them the benefit of the doubt, and we should. The modern day proliferation of cheap video recording equipment has, however, begun to paint a far different picture. Hell, police in many jurisdictions have now even sued to block citizens' rights to record them in action, claiming - rather extraordinarily so - that they have some "right to privacy" while performing their duties.

They just can't afford to have citizens continuing to recored them as they shoot restrained suspects (BART shooting), "kick the Mexican piss outa" them (Seattle case caught on video), slam the wrong guy into a brick wall causing permanent brain damage (another recent Seattle case, settled today where Seattle will pay the victim over $2m), repeatedly kick a surrendering, prostrate young man in the ribs (another recent Seattle case, wherein the officer got the wrong guy and kicked the bejeebers out of him, captured on a convenience store camera), or night stick a prostrate, restrained man repeatedly in the kidneys and ribs, again a recent Seattle case... and on and on. One is left to wonder how many "resisting arrest", or "fell down the stairs", or "banged his head on the roof getting into the back of the car" explanations from the past were valid. Benefit of the doubt, yes, but video after video says otherwise.

Seattle is on a roll - since the disintegration of the citizens' review board, the Seattle PD has come under ever increasing scrutiny for its unusual number of complaints about police brutality. The ACLU has now asked for a Justice Department investigation of endemic brutality against minority citizens. Just the ones actually caught on video are appalling. One is left to wonder how many more occur every day. Maybe that's why the neighbors looking out through their blinds are hoping the officer "gets shot in the face...".