<p>Personally, I’m usually the first one to defend police officers. Tasings, shootings, clubbings, whatever; I’m always willing to give officers the initial benefit of the doubt.</p>
<p>That said, the incident that happened at UMD was, in my opinion, criminal. The kid wasn’t threatening at all, and contrary to police reports he did not assault the officers. I was horrified to see the video and hope justice is pursued swiftly in this case.</p>
<p>Cuse, my son was there, but at least had the good sense enough to observe what the police were doing, quickly assess the situation, and beat feet the heck out of there before he was in the middle of a bad situation.</p>
<p>Normally, I’m also the first to side with the police on most situations. This is not one of those times. The police over-reacted, plain and simple, and wrongly turned a minor situation of a bunch of rowdy young college students into a very ugly thing. Applied a “guilty first, beat second, control the situation third” attitude. I’m positive the bad press the PW and CP police department got during the riots in 92 when the U of Md Basketball team on the National Championship (students rioting for real on Rte 1, burning cars and crashing windows) had a lot to do with the way they reacted to THIS particular crowd (where the worst that happened was one kid burning a Duke T-shirt in a garbage can that caused a nearby tree to catch fire). </p>
<p>I don’t know. But it seems to me our police force has adopted too close to military tactics to handle some situations that could just as easily be handled a lot calmer, with a lot less violence. I’d prefer to see more Sheriff Andy Taylor than Deputy Barney Fife. Looks like Deputy Fife was in charge that night on Rte 1.</p>