Brickbat: When Push Comes to Shove

Surveillance video

The Clearwater, Florida, police department has fired officer Michael Leonardo after he was caught on video slamming a handcuffed 13-year-old to the ground after the boy cursed him. The boy suffered facial injuries including a chipped tooth.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

For criminal assault of course the harshest form of punishment allowed to a law enforcement officer is termination.

[Longtobefree]

And public embarrassment; don't forget that.

[some guy]

You know what? He actually got fired. That's much more than these cops seem to usually get. Sure, maybe he can go get another job two towns over, but at least he got fired. I'm not even going to complain.

[AlmightyJB]

Yeah, hopefully both parties learned a lesson.

[AlmightyJB]

If course the kids probably going to get rich from this.

[Radioactive]

well, shit at least he didn't shoot the little fucker!

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

A perfect example of how actual criminal charges, as any ordinary civilian/pleb would suffer, would do wonders to curb criminal cops. Their buddies would of course try to hide more and coverup more incidents, but cases like this would make that pretty hard, and those who tried to hide it would also be in trouble, criminally: tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, etc.

Cops would think twice and thrice after a buddy got sent to jail for 6 months for this kind of stuff.

On a semi-related note, I usually use civilian in instances like this and always get some response from commenters who get up on their high horse and point out that cops are civilians too, not understanding my sarcastic use as "outsider", "layman", etc; I think I may start using "pleb" more often. But it doesn't have the sarcastic overtone of aping cops calling us "civilians".

[crufus]

Who would want to be a cop if you don't get to face plant a 13 year boy?