Video shows El Monte police officer kicking suspect in head

First news posting, didn't find a dupe post of this so far. Please, be gentle :p



Source - LA Times

Video shown of the end of a car chase where the criminal crashes into a parked car, takes off on foot, then apparently surrenders by laying face down with his hands above his head on the ground, only to be treated by a RUNNING KICK to the side of the head, and a high five by the officers.

This is yet another example of officers brutalizing people, but now celebrating it.

While I'm all for criminals getting whats coming to them, there is no defense for kicking a man when he's down and surrendering.

(Hopefully youtube video works)

from another article, the police chief has released a statement (irrelevant bits removed)

"El Monte police Chief Tom Armstrong declined to name the involved officers and said he is reserving judgement on the incident until an investigation is complete.

"I will not say it's right or wrong until I see all the facts," Armstrong said. "We take issues like this seriously, but we will not pillory this officer without all the facts."

El Monte police Lt. Chuck Carlson said his department immediately opened an internal affairs investigation into the pursuit.

"Because of the concern, we've called internal affairs already," Carlson said. "They've started an investigation to see whether there was any misconduct on the part of the officer."

Officials will determine in the coming days what, if any, administrative action the department will levy, Armstrong said.

"I expect (the officer) to be on duty tomorrow," Armstrong said Wednesday, "but again, we're still collecting information."

Now, call me silly, but here's a video that showed up on the news, and they have to see if there are any other 'facts' before doing.. well, anything?

now mind you, if any of us here went and flagrantly just hauled off and kicked an occifer in the head, we'd be on the ground in cuffs before you could say boo, and in jail before you could say "hi-yaaa"... and they have to wait for an investigation?

www.whittierdailynews.com...