Something has got to change if the police ever want to start earning back the reputation they were aiming to have when they were all started, and it has got to start soon for the sake of all of us. With the increasing amount of video evidence proving that police forces are acting more like military authoritarians than community aids it’s hard to deny there’s some legitimate issues in their training, and if not their training then the people chosen for the work themselves.
This dash cam footage comes from a police cruiser in Loraine, Ohio, where a police officer escorting a handcuffed African American man to the hood of the car instead slams the man down onto the windshield, sending cracks through the whole thing. If they weren’t shatterproof there’s no doubt in my mind that glass would have shattered from the force of the impact – see for yourself. The kicker to the whole thing is that the police weren’t there for him specifically, they were there investigating drug related complaints in the neighborhood.
The man’s name is Pele Smith and he has since been treated for his injuries at Mercy Regional Medical Center and has been charged with tampering with evidence, obstruction official business and resisting arrest; the officers on-scene claimed he had attempted to swallow a baggie of drugs, though the video only shows him yelling back towards his mother to look after his son while he dealt with this and eventually made a plea deal to get out on probation. Smith has since filed a civil rights lawsuit against Officer Zachary Ferenec, the man who slammed him face-first into the glass and the three other officers who stood by.
Source.