Cycle of Violence

Of YouTube and bike cops

Philadelphia Weekly

By Steven Wells

Posted May. 5, 2009

The past month has been a bonanza for fans of Police Brutality Videos (PBVs). A drunk white cop was caught mocking a black murder victim in Erie, Pa.; members of the NYPD were filmed pepper-spraying students peacefully protesting the continued employment of President Bob Kerrey at New School University; New Jersey cops were taped beating and pepper-spraying a mentally challenged child; and in Philadelphia footage emerged of corrupt narcotics officers terrorizing local shopkeepers.

To top it off, a genre classic, "Naked Wizard Tased By Reality," hit the web on April 24. The video—shot at last month's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif.—starts with a naked man at an outdoor event refusing orders from three police officers to dress, much to the delight of college-aged crowd.

Things turn ugly fast. The cops have the man's arms bent behind his back, and he's being kicked in the back of the knee and pinned to the ground by his hair. One of the policemen then brandishes a Taser.

An officer (easily weighing in at about 300 pounds) uses a knee to drop his body on the naked man's torso. It's a sneak move straight out of the WWE villain's playbook. Spectators gasp in disbelief.

The video gets nastier when the naked guy leaps up and tries to run, and the obese cop Tasers him. The man falls to the ground and spasms—clearly incapable of any further resistance—while a cop continues to Taser him. Kids in the crowd scream at him to stop. The cop carries on zapping.

Last week it was Philly's turn for a rock-related PBV. It was nowhere near as dramatic as prior Philly PBVs: the March 19 confrontation between anti-police brutality protestors and police officers at City Hall or the internationally infamous May 7, 2008, mass police stomping of shooting suspects in Hunting Park (two days after the murder of a Philadelphia officer during an armed robbery).

The video posted on YouTube—showing a confrontation between Philly bike cops and the members and crews of the girl-friendly power-pop bands who played the Bamboozle Roadshow at the TLA on April 26—is hardly a classic of the genre.

"Cops Going Crazy @ Bamboozle Roadshow" is an unedited montage of crash zooms and long shots, the verbal taunting of officers ("nice bike"), off-camera allegations ("They have cops out here who are beating the crap out of people, they're going insane"), what sounds like steel batons rapidly hitting flesh and the shrill indignation of watching fans. But very little actual violence. The would-be documentarians are further thwarted both by aggressive police attempts to stop them filming and by confrontational area residents.

The TLA incident involved members and crew from three out-of-town bands— Forever the Sickest Kids, We the Kings and Mercy Mercedes. The exact pattern of escalation is hard to establish, but it involved one officer ordering the Mercy Mercedes van be impounded after it ran over a water bottle, soaking the officer. And it climaxed with Chris V—the merchandising guy for We the Kings—being repeatedly hit in the head by officers using telescopic steel batons.

"Chris V was being pushed back into the venue from the alley by three cops with billy clubs," wrote eyewitness Brendan Walter from Philly band Valencia. "They were screaming and pushing him to the ground, threw him down onto a glass bottle that he hit his head on, split it open. He was bleeding everywhere and they still continued to beat him with clubs."

This is from the tweetstream of Travis Clark, the singer from We the Kings: "There is nothing worse then a friend asking you for help & knowing you can't do anything about it cause 5 cops are standing in front of you."

Actual footage of the beating, while supposedly filmed by numerous fans, has yet to be posted.

The cell-phone camera and YouTube-assisted rise of the PBV (and its accompanying comments page) has nurtured another very modern American phenomenon—the authority-worshipping cop fetishist who finds justification for even the most brutal police violence in the behavior of the victim and then posts comments about it:

On the TLA video: "Don't push a cop and you won't get your head split open. Find another cause hippies."

On "Naked Wizard": "It's a shame that [the naked guy] had to entice these cops away from their real job and force them to act on their baser natures."

Some posters hide their bootlicking servility behind a façade of pseudo-street-smart cynicism: "When you call cops `faggots' and `assholes' … you can really only cry but so much when things go downhill. Not saying that it wasn't excessive, but again, when you refuse to stop talking shit to cops, you do so with the knowledge that things probably won't end well."

On the websites discussing the TLA beating, however, the cop-humpers are easily outnumbered by fans who seem genuinely surprised and shocked that police officers could behave so horribly.

"Is it getting to the point where the police are allowed to do this to people and get away with it?" asks one fan in a YouTube posting titled "Bands Assulted [sic] By Cops!! This Is Unfair!!" Could it be that the regularly viewed behavior of police officers in PBVs is teaching young suburban Americans to regard the police with hostility unimaginable in previous generations?

There's one last lesson to be learned from the PBV phenom: Recording (and/or Tweeting about) brutality isn't enough.

The most disgusting shot in the naked guy video isn't the dropped knee to the gut or the frenzied Tasering. It's a long pan shot of the crowd. There must be at least 100 people watching (or filming or Tweeting or texting) while a defenseless man is brutalized. Many in the crowd are shouting. Some of them sound angry and disgusted. But not one person steps forward to address the police officers directly. No one tries to help. "Festivalgoers Save Naked Man From Out-of-Control Cops" would've been a much better video.

1. lalaw9833 said... on May 5, 2009 at 11:39PM

"The cop groupies and the racist slugs that speak from behind the "Domelights" curtain will unfortunately always be blind to reality. They know it will never happen to them, in their cop land neighborhoods, at their catholic schools, or wherever they congregate. Look at all of the incidents that have occured in the past few months and you know it is an epidemic that has to be address one way or the other."

2. Anonymous said... on May 6, 2009 at 06:18PM

"seriously, watching that crowd of drones just standing there with their mouths open, filming a beating and all they can think of is going home later and putting it on you-tube, fucking depressing.

jesus christ, I thought 2010 was going to be cool and look like lawnmower man, or at least really oppressive and 1984/ rollerball / total recall style but really it's everyone's lowest common denominator stupidity jackhammered into our brains 24 / 7

time to move to the woods "

3. Anonymous said... on May 6, 2009 at 11:47PM

"It occurs to me that the crowd stood there and simply watched in horror because they know, in their heart of hearts, that racial minorities and other marginalized groups are not the only people that the police get away with brutalizing. Sure, if they'd interfered and gotten their heads bashed in, there would've been some noise from city and police officials, but at the end of the day, the cops would likely have walked or suffered minimal consequences. The police know it, too, and that's why they're not all that afraid to reveal their true natures."

4. fink said... on May 6, 2009 at 11:54PM

"As much as I agree with you, I can't help but think of what would have happened if there weren't any videos of these such events...the cops would say whatever they wanted and get a slap on the wrist. It's hard to overlook/cover up something when there's actual proof on youtube for the world to see."