Public Safety or Police Brutality?

The video below shows a man dancing at the Coachella music festival this year. He is also naked.

In the beginning of the video, the three policemen present were trying, albeit rather patiently, to get the man to put his clothes back on. But the man continued to refuse, albeit nonviolently and without the use of profanity. A few minutes into trying to coax him to re-clothe himself, the policemen seem to collectively lose their patience with this man and begin to use violent force. While it is hard to tell how much strength someone possesses on video, it seems the man wasn't struggling to break free of their grasp all that much, being perhaps just a little squirmy.

Ultimately, they end up kneeing him in his side, smashing his face into the dirt, twisting his arms back into what appears to be very painful positions, and then tazing him several times. All the while he resisted not, he never even swore, and just said, "I don't care, I don't care!"

All for being naked. Naked.

Over the last couple of days that I've known about this video, I've read on several different forums and blogs a lot of support for the policemen's actions, some even going so far as to say (paraphrasing), "What if he were to have raped some little girl or something?" I strongly, strongly disagree with this poorly reasoned comment. He in NO way was insinuating any type of sexual behavior, intent, or otherwise. He was simply dancing about with a couple of boas. Harmless.

So yes. If the rules of the event were such that one must stay clothed, fine. Cart him off to jail for refusing to redress himself once asked a few times. And I would even sanction them resorting to some type of physical restraint to control him if he were posing a physical threat to anyone there. Perhaps this guy was a little crocked - fine. Cart him off to jail. But in no way, in NO WAY, was it acceptable for the police to use so much force on this man. No way. It was quite barbaric and in my opinion, a very clear abuse of power on the part of these "authorities".



Naked Wizard Tased By Reality from Tracy Anderson on Vimeo.