On the day we’re supposed to be celebrating our freedoms, a video is going viral revealing the true extent of our freedoms, showing a California Highway Patrolman pummeling a woman with his fists on the side of the road.
Her crime: contempt of cop. Essentially walking away from the cop while he was apparently barking orders at her.
We don’t know much else right now because the CHP is ensuring us they beat her for her own safety and that the incident is “under investigation,” which is cop talk for they screwed up, but are clamming up in the hopes we’ll go away and forget about the beating.
And we probably will forget considering tomorrow will be another beating from another police department caught on video that will be making the internet rounds as well as on the subsequent days.
This is the America we live in, where police violence runs rampant and the only defense we have against it is our cameras.
But even then, that can land you in jail or turn you into the victim of a vicious beating.
According to NBC Los Angeles:
The video footage begins as the CHP officer is standing next to a red pick-up truck on the freeway on-ramp. He makes his way across to a concrete median where he follows a woman who is walking there and is carrying a white bag.
Moments later, the officer tries to grab the woman’s arm as she appears to resist.
As he tries to gain control over the woman, he throws her to the ground. While the woman is on her back, the officer holds her down and delivers about a dozen hits to her head and upper body in about 11 seconds, according to the video.
“These are like, grown men, on top of you punching you to a point where she could’ve died out there,” Diaz said.
The woman, who was not immediately identified, appears to use her arms and hands to protect her face from the officer’s blows. A second man joins the officer to help control the woman as she is placed in handcuffs.
“She was screaming,” witness Daina Tate said. “Two men were on her. They had her arms up. She couldn’t defend herself. She looked totally helpless and terrified.
“It was shocking, and you can’t really call the cops on the cops.”
Another witness who did not want to be identified told NBC4 the woman “did not look well, mentally” when she was walking along the freeway.
The woman was “carrying a lot of bags” and was not wearing shoes, only black socks, the witness said.
After she was brought down to the asphalt by the officer, the woman put her arms up “trying to guard herself,” the witness said. “She looked terrified…she just looked gone.”
The video was originally posted on Youtube, but Youtube removed it, claiming it was “content designed to harass, bully or threaten.”
This is the America we live in, where cops are free to harass, bully or threaten us at any given moment, but then will complain to Youtube that we’re doing the same to them by posting videos of such actions.
Happy Fourth of July! Be sure to follow the rules out there or you may wind up like the woman in the video.
