wuf, I agree with you that things like this are a balancing act and its easy to sway too far to either side sometimes.

However,

Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
control and reason in an attempt to not abuse and go too far.
This is the part I disagree with. As far as I'm concerned this guy lost most of his rights the instant he starts fighting with the police. Obviously you can't just shoot the guy in the head for taking a swing at an officer, but I'd rather err on the side of slightly too much force than not enough. What if the guy decided to go after the civilian with the broom and broke his nose?

It would be interesting if we knew statistics like accusations of police brutality vs convictions of police brutality. Lots of people are just fucking idiots and get themselves into shitty situations and then claim "POLICE BRUTALITY!" when they're being put in handcuffs and stuffed into a police car. You see this on COPS all the time.

If you follow the instructions of the officers then you're going to have no issues, its pretty much that simple. Let's use an example from To Catch a Predator. After they're caught, lots of these guys jog out of the house where they meet a group of police officers. The police yell "get on the ground" every fucking time. Yet some of these guys are so upset that they're caught and going to jail that they do something like just stand there and put their face in their hands. And then they get the shit tackled out of them by the police. Do I feel bad? No, because 1. they're scumbags who broke the law, but 2. they didn't listen to what the police were saying.

Imo, in most cases where police have to use force they're completely justified in what they do.