This was taken with a (now ubiquitous) cell phone camera. Yes, these sorts of videos may not tell the whole story - a jury acquitted the police in the Rodney King beating.
Still, it doesn’t look very good for the cop who shot this guy, at least on the surface. One of the problems with tough economic times is that social unrest is much more easily triggered, and such unrest can easily turn violent, which makes this all the more worrisome.
You can bet, though, that the reaction of police departments all over the nation will be to continue to try to ban filming of their actions, if not legally, then at least unofficially.
It won’t work. The surveillance society works both ways.
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Although it’s minor, to me it sticks out like a sore thumb:
Emphasis mine. I assume you meant “very.”
Feel free to delete this comment if you decide to make the edit. I think you’re expected to make a note of the edit in the original post, but you would know better than me.
3 on 1 on the ground and they had to shoot? Damn straight in don’t look good for the cop. I suppose he’s on “administrative leave” with pay.
We had this discussion recently, as a matter of fact. I decreed that any editor could fix typos (which this obviously was) and otherwise copyedit for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and whatnot, with no further notice.
This “every change must be noted” thing came out of the early days of the political blogosphere, and was based on a misunderstanding of the editing function in journalism.