The following video has a good outcome because the chief of police and the mayor put their foot down and demand better police behaviour. So this is one case of police violence where I think something positive has come out of it. To me this is very encouraging:
Here are details from a BBC report:
The attack on Anthony Warren took place in January 2008, but police video footage has only just been made public.The fact that the police did not provide the prosecution with the full version of events compounds the initial crime of beating an unconscious suspect. You can't have the police acting as judge, jury, and executioners. There is a reason for courts separate from the police. It allows calm rational evaluation of evidence. The fact that the police acted violently and that they then subverted the judicial process by hiding evidence is the reason they were fired.
It was uncovered in March by prosecutors preparing a case against Warren for assaulting an officer, for which he was later convicted.
Officials said other officers had seen the video but never reported it.
The video was captured on 23 January 2008 by a camera mounted on a police car dashboard.
It shows Warren, who had been questioned about possible drug activity, driving at speed along a motorway, pursued by at least three police cars.
He swerves around one vehicle before hitting and injuring a police officer on foot.
Warren then turns onto a slip road and appears to swerve before the car rolls into a ditch, but a cut in the video makes it unclear how he came to lose control of the car.
He is thrown from the car window and lies in the ditch not moving before the policemen rush over and begin beating him.
At least one officer jumps onto Warren with his fist raised and another uses a baton to hit him. Warren does not move throughout the attack.
The footage emerged as state lawyers were preparing a case of attempted murder against Warren for the police officer he hit on the road.
District Attorney Brandon Falls said the video police provided as evidence stopped before the footage of the beating and he only saw the full version by chance a week before the trial. ...
Lawyers for Warren said he was hospitalised after the incident and was not aware that he had been beaten until the video came to light.
The five policemen have not been identified but Police Chief AC Roper said they were veteran officers who had acted in a "shameful" manner.
He said his department had "terminated 50 years of combined service due to 10 seconds of injustice".
"No doubt this guy was a menace to society, but he didn't deserve what happened to him, bottom line," Mr Roper was quoted as saying by Birmingham News.
"I fully support our officers and fully believe in officer safety, but this video speaks for itself."
The authorities believe that many police officers and supervisors had watched the video in the year before it was made public but had not reported it.
Mr Roper said a review would be carried out into "supervisor's actions, reporting mechanisms and policies".
The officers can appeal against their dismissal.
Warren pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and was given a 20-year prison sentence.
Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford said the incident was a reminder of Alabama's history of police brutality and segregation.
"In Birmingham, Alabama, in the present day, it is not acceptable," he said.
As for the past... I remember all too well when the police were an arm of the KKK. In my youth I watched far too many grainy TV reports in which blacks protesting for civil rights were beaten, hosed down, and had dogs loosed upon them. I remember the horrible day when 4 young girls were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham. And while I didn't witness the events of the Birmingham bus boycott, I've read and watched documentaries about it. There has been slow progress to get Birmingham to where it is now. It is a shame that the police still harbour some who cling to the past when the police were thugs in the employ of racists intent of putting down blacks so that the white elite could more easily exploit them.
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