[user104658]

Originally Posted by GiRTh

Simply, the police officers in such situations are trained to deal with such situations and they actually attempt to justify the use of violence or excessive force. The people in this vid reacted to a belligerent and offensive individual. It is not even close to being the same.,

Good reason to understand and empathise with why people who are not trained in how to respond to violence might lash out in retaliation. Not reason to applaud or suggest it as the right/correct course of action after the fact. I've already said that I understand why people might lash out in frustration and shouldn't be condemned for it: I entirely agree that police officers being (supposedly) trained professionals means that they should be condemned for resorting to unnecessary violence.

The reasons that the crimes of the "perpetrator" (in this case the old man) are irrelevant when looking at the use of violence are exactly the same.

Originally Posted by Dezzy

A police officer shooting people to death or paralysis without warning or due process is a world away from a racist private citizen abusing other citizens and attempting to hit them, only for them to retaliate. It should be exceedingly obvious why.

I'm not talking about the ultra-extreme cases where people with their hands on their heads are gunned down, or cases where people who are not guilty of any crime are killed or injured. I'm talking about the use of excessive force against genuine perpetrators. If the police were called to a domestic violence situation and found that a 70 year old man had hit a family member... Had been hitting them regularly for years, even... and they rushed in and hit him in the face with a baton risking a brain bleed when he was no active threat... We would hopefully and rightly be horrified. In fact I know we would because there have been threads very recently where people have brought up the crimes and violent actions of victims of excessive retaliatory violence in the vein of "this guy had it coming", "I have no sympathy" and it has been firmly stated in response that "it doesn't matter - its still wrong".

It is wrong.

The suggestion that we should have higher expectations of police officers in "doing the right thing" than we do of non-officers is fine, I agree with that too. But the difference is in the expectation that they actually do the right thing... Not in what IS the right thing.