Girl-Punching (and Cop-Taping) in Seattle

Via beloved Hit&Run regular Dagny T. comes this video of a Seattle cop cold punching a gal in the face in the course of investigating an outbreak of jaywalking. Take a look:

Story here.

I'm no expert on this stuff, but a few observations: 1) That cop doesn't seem very skilled at neutralizing teenage girls. 2) It remains poor strategy to yell repeated angry obscenities at police officers in the course of their work. But most importantly, 3) Look at all those phone-cams! The Rodney King video exists only because there happened to be some guy with an expensive video camera in the vicinity. Thank goodness that no only do we live in different technological times, but that the default strategy by the bystanders in the video above was mostly to stand a safe distance, whip out a recording device, and trust in transparency to deliver justice.

Radley Balko argued for the right to videotape cops back in April.