Man charged for covering head during police beating

[IDemo]

By Daniel Tencer
Thursday, November 25th, 2010 - 7:59 pm

A Miami man whose beating at the hands of police was captured on cell phone video has been charged with resisting arrest without violence, a charge his lawyer says came from nothing more than the man's attempts to cover his head from the blows.

Gilberto Matamoros, a 21-year-old youth center worker, says he was doing nothing wrong when police arrested him during a brawl in Miami's Coconut Grove neighborhood on Halloween. According to his lawyer, Ricardo Martinez-Cid, Matamoros was picked out of an unruly crowd and beaten unconscious by two Miami police officers. He had to be taken to a nearby hospital.

Cell phone footage of the incident shows a police officer hitting Matamoros five times on or near his head. Miami police launched an investigation into the two officers' actions after the video appeared on local news stations last week.

"This is being investigated at this particular time, and until that investigation is completed, we're really not going to have any comments," Police Chief Miguel Exposito said last week.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/man-charged-covering-head-police-beating/

[somone]

1. Thugs with a badge

Courts should not accept their testimony without videotape

[MisterP]

2. Obama-bashing union-breaking Koch-funded LIBERTARIAN ATTENTION WHORE!

is what some would say

[ThomCat]

3. If not for that video tape, this guy would have been

railroaded into jail.

Without this video they would have charged him with more than just non-violently resisting arrest.

Juries believe cops when they insist that a guy was doing something wrong, or when they say that he attacked them or fought back and resisted arrest. Chances are very good that this guy would have been spending a years in prison if this video didn't exist.

But even with this video, will those cops face anything more than an extra paid vacation? Even if they are on suspension now, they'll almost certainly get to appeal punishments and get those punishments eased later, retroactively, which often means getting paid for any time off. How is a paid vacation any kind of a punishment for beating someone unconscious?

If you or I attacked someone on the job we would be fired immediately, arrested, and we would be in prison. But cops rarely ever get fired or put in prison for their abuses. It is long past time for that immunity they have to be stripped down so they aren't able to attack people on a whim without consequences.

[Mariana]

4. Why is it that EVERY SINGLE time

a police officer commits a violent crime (like, say, beating a man senseless) in the presence of other police officers, the other police officers do NOTHING to stop it? Instead, they either join in themselves, or they stand around pretending not to see the crime being committed in front of their eyes.