Monday, July 21, 2008
Police Brutality
I saw a crazy act of police brutality on Friday afternoon around 2:30 PM in front of my studio in Brooklyn. I was on the phone with Seb Demian discussing the new composed score he is making for WEAPONS and as I was talking and looking out the window (2nd floor) a blue minivan pulled to a stop in the middle of the street right in front of my building and a guy, white or perhaps light skinned Hispanic dressed in normal street clothing, jumped out of the van with a Glock 9mm pistol on his hip (in a holster) and pulled the gun out and pointed it at a tall, thin Muslim, very light skinned, almost looked Hasidic, wearing the traditional robe and Kufi with a super long beard. At first it looked like the cop was going to shoot the man and they exchanged words back and forth and the Muslim put his hands in front of his face like he was scared but didn't run. Then the cop suddenly attacked him, threw him against a parked car and proceeded to beat him and rough him up a little bit, talking shit in his ear and putting his hands behind his back as if he was going to arrest him. This went on for about 20 seconds, meanwhile I'm watching and telling Seb the blow-by-blow account over the phone and he can't believe what he's hearing. Finally the cop shoved the guy and ran back to his minivan, jumped in and drove off. The Muslim guy ran down the block in the opposite direction, looking very scared and confused. He didn't seem to be bleeding or too badly hurt so I guess he's okay. This happened in broad daylight and there were at least a half dozen witnesses. I didn't see what happened in the moments before the cop jumped out of his minivan and can only imagine there was some sort of altercation.
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5 comments:
the muslim guy didn't do anything violent or threatening to provoke the police officer? and they didn't arrest him or issue a summons for anything? that's insane. i wonder what the hell the cop was thinking...
one more question, how do you know the guy was a cop? unmarked van and regular street clothes.
wow. all i can say is that this sort of thing (no matter what it was) probably happens every few minutes here in the city. amazing first post to 'we has spoken'.
Good question, Mike. I'm assuming he was a cop for a number of reasons, first of all the gun on his hip in a holster. Besides Law Enforcement there's a tiny fraction of people in this city who are permitted to carry guns. Secondly, his behavior, ie the way he pointed the gun, the way he walked with the gun, etc was that of someone who was trained in how to handle a weapon properly.
The "cop" did not arrest the Muslim man or anything, his entire motive seemed to be to intimidate him / show him who is the man and once he felt like he had proved his point he bounced. He was mad a hell, in fact when he jumped out of the van and drew his weapon I was almost sure he was going to fire, that's how angry he seemed.
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