Wild Wild West

Last night I witnessed a man get tasered by cops for running and not stopping when they told him to. The way the brother hit the concrete--dove into the concrete--when the electricity hit him was the same way one would dive into a pool. But this was a street. Concrete. It was hard to watch. Once he was on the ground they roughed him up even more, stomped on his back, and handcuffed him.

This is definitely the kind of footage that I like to capture, but unfortunately I couldn't get my camera situatied fast enough to do so.

Many will argue that the cops are in their right to carry out acts of violence on noncompliant individuals. I disagree. If the person is non violent and is not posing a threat to cops or those around him, then why should violence be used against him? What ever happened to cops running people down until they catch them? Rather than it being a thing where some of these cops are doing their job to "protect and serve" it is becoming personal. They take it personally that somebody would dare run from them. They take it personally that someone would disobey them. They take it personally that someone would question them. It's more personal than it is professional and appropriate. To me this is proven by the cases when they person that they were after is caught, handcuffed, then beat or harassed even more by the cop.

I don't know what the brother had done to cause the cops to get after him in the first place, but the violence that I saw used towards him touched me deeply.