What's going on in this video?

Just the law. And it doesn't really have anything to do with the public place, just the expectation of privacy one might have in that public place, and the intent of the audio.

If the police are investigating a crime in a public place and an audio recording of the investigation might hinder that investigation, an officer may tell someone to stop audio recording, just like they can put up police tape and keep people out of public places.

There are a lot of grey areas with the law, but not in this case here. The people who shot the cell phone video will not be charged and shouldn't be charged.

There was a case where an officer pulled over a motorist for speeding, and the motorist audiotaped the interaction without informing the officer. The motorist was charged with the illegal audiotaping and was found guilty under MA law.

And I agree with you about getting more educated cops (although that would have made no difference with this arrest).

The Police recruiters do visit the universities but college kids do not want to be cops, and they usually go to the bottom of the list anyway. Massachusetts Police departments, including the Boston police have to use civil service which makes the rules as to who they can hire or not hire. Veterans, minorities, and Boston residents get put at the top of the list regardless of their education, work history, score on the civil service test, etc.

The bottom line is that the police will not be found to have acted in the wrong from this video. I will bet anyone money on that.

i thought you had to be 21 to get beat up by a cop.....

i was just going on what the youtube video said, and still says: 16

were you there or something? How do you know this sequence of events?

I'm only going on what I see in the video. First thing I see is what appears to be a finger over the lens, then I see a tight huddle of officers, with a sneaker sideways under what seems to be an undercover officer. I see the officer attacking something, then I'm able to make out a squirming body. This video shows the officer striking before it shows anyone resisting, not putting arms where instructed, etc. That is all I can go on.

As far as naming a more civilized recourse: I imagine that the dozen or so cops leaning on their proverbial shovels could apply some horse power in detaining the suspect. I realize there are some geometry and physics problems to be worked out, but really I have a hard time imagining that these cops could not stabilize this kid using just gravity and their weight and some strategically placed knees. My friends and I had no problem doing it to my brother growing up, and adjusted for scale these guys have a better mass advantage than we did.

First off, It is very easy to keep your arms away from someone if you are on the ground. If you have ever wrestled or done any kind of this training, it is very hard to get someones arm out who doesn't want it to be out.

That being said, if the kid had a gun, he could have pulled it out and shot someone. All cops have seen hundreds of videos of criminals doing this sort of thing, so the necessary amount of force can be used to make people keep their hands away from their body.

And criminals who do have guns often times act like this kid was acting like.

they don't know what the kid's got in his hands or pockets and what he might do with it.

You can't see the problem with this as a guiding theory of justification for the use of extreme force?

No offense intended- my apologies.

You're starting to win me over. Or at least, I'm beginning to see your point better.

I don't know police procedure for this specific situation aside from all those years watching COPS (which I wouldnt equate with actually having gone through police training, but I imagine is somewhat more accurate than purely fictional portrayals).

OK so we have asked you to lay down and you complied, but you will not pull out your hands, and while you have a gun in your waist we don't necessary know that, but we are cautious to the possibility but also don't want to shoot an unarmed man.

Of course I don't know how close we are to you when this happens, or the layout of the space. But with that as the situation, I would imagine we have guns drawn pointed at you from different vantage points, and you realize it. We scream to show your hands, but you don't. We scream ultimatums. We threaten to shoot. No hands. We have cops on different sides of you, slowly moving in toward you, guns pointed. As officers we are literally putting ourselves at risk, but we are armored to some degree, and know we are trained for this situation, while the suspect is not. At some point, we pounce. At the point several things could happen:

1. you pull out a gun, but we recognize the gun and kill you before you can hit one of us, an ideal situation and one we are trained for.

2. you pull out a gun, and shoot one of us before we can recognize the gun, but we know you can only get off one. you are killed.

3. you pull out your hands, we recognize this and don't shoot.

4. you keep your hands hidden. I have 8 other men crowded around you. they may not be able to pull your arms and hands out from under your body, but they sure as hell can keep you from bringing them out yourself. With some weight and muscles you can be fairly well restrained, if you are too wily: pepper spray. Taser. Cork bullets. Whatever, we have a whole arsenal of things to use, right? Why would we need to resort to thuggish tactics?

I mean I know that the taser and spray and cork bullets are potentially very dangerous themselves but there is logic and science to them, and an exercise of control, that isn't there with the thug punches and cheap-shots. And to be honest at that point you could even tell the dude look show us your goddam hands our we're going to taser you.

Also why don't cops in this day and age record their own situations like this? They can do it from cruisers, but why not have a protocol for it away from cruisers. If they are following their own rules it can only help them in court, and save us tons of money on investigations like this. It wouldn't be too tough for one of those cops standing around watching to be video (not audio) recording.

I get it, it's a public forum, and here we are presented with a fairly grave current event in our society, one that seems illustrative of one or more problems with our society. So we all chime in. I"m just saying that the humility and logic that is embedded into the jury process is a pretty good model for conducting oneself in a discussion about this. I'm not trying to mandate moral code or tell people they are doing it wrong, rather saying "hey this is how you would make a real decision about this".

Gist is not visible, that is your imagination filling in gaps based on perceived norms.

That is just the difference between you and I it seems. In my life I try to make decisions based primarily on facts. If they tell an incomplete story, and it is acceptable for me to remain undecided (as it is here for me) then I wait for more evidence.