My father was a police officer in a major US city in the 60s through 80s. The "I feared for my life" excuse was a big joke to him and his fellow officers back then, and now most people seem to know about it, but there's yet another one, which apparently is newer, involving the "assault" of an officer. Back then, another excuse/joke was, "the suspect slipped and fell down the stairs." This was used when a suspect was "causing problems," in the event of a police brutality claim. One thing I don't remember them ever saying is, "the suspect assaulted an officer" or "the suspect resisted arrest," perhaps because "rough treatment" during an arrest was expected (I simply don't know). What are the implications of this? Read on...
Here's a video which seems to be an example of "the new normal:"
https://www.youtube.com/...
You can move it ahead to 1:50. From what I understand, this woman was said to have assaulted an officer because of how she lifted her leg up, as instructed, while being intoxicated, and having her hands up against a wall with her back turned to the office who was "assaulted." The three officers seem to have brutalized her after that, as you can see, for some reason. In the Bland case, the question that nobody seems to be asking is, what could she have done to justify being arrested. One report said that she swung her elbows out, and when I heard that it reminded me of this video. We can't see it in the dashcam video, but it would be very easy for an officer to get too close to a suspect (assuming the person should be designated as such at a particular point) or to even touch the suspect in a strange way, which for most people would reflexively result in moving the shoulders, elbows, etc. Then, so long as any part of the officer (or his clothing or equipment) is touched, an assault of an officer charge can be brought. Moreover, you can get physically assaulted in a way that most people would consider "real," as opposed to the brushing up kind of "assault" that apparently occurred here (the autopsy mentioned deep tissue damage to Bland's back).
And of course even if the charge is dismissed later, the suspect might spend days in jail, and perhaps be subject to what you see in the video (or worse)! For me, this is a "police state" tactic, not that I'm claiming the US is a police state now. However, I do think there are too many things we've seen, such as how protesters were initially treated in Ferguson several months ago, to ignore what appears to be a frightening trend. And when you add the old excuses for police brutality to the new trend, things can get very bad very quickly, especially when you include various kinds of "profiling" as well. It seems like we are at an "absolute power corrupts absolutely" stage in police behavior, at least when it comes to certain people (due to no fault of their own), which is exacerbated by the "blue wall of silence." We appear to have witnessed a technique that can be used even when there is no reason for an officer to "fear for his life," that is the ability to bait someone into a situation that will result in that person being physically assaulted and possibly jailed for days, simply because the officer didn't like the person's "attitude." What else are they doing that has yet to be captured on video and uploaded to Youtube?