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Who watches the Watchmen's Watchmen?

Not that I don't have anything else to do on a Monday afternoon, but I've been begged to create a post on the following video. Anything to please my fans!

This is what I see:

1. A drunken and screaming man, holding what may be a bottle in a brown paper bag, initiates a fight with another BART passenger.


2. A police officer prevents the fight by pulling the man out of the train, to the applause of other passengers.


3. The officer leads the man to a platform wall by incapacitating the man?s left hand?-the hand that may be holding a bottle-?and by pushing the man?s back/upper right shoulder. (You can?t see clearly from the clip; the officer may be grabbing onto the hood of the man?s coat.)


4. The officer shoves the man into the windowed wall. Impact with the window is made with the man?s (unrestrained) right hand, not with his head. The glass shatters.


5. It takes an additional 30 seconds for the police officer to successfully restrain the man. The police officer appears to be more injured by the broken glass than the man.

Okay. As far as I can tell, the officer does not intend or anticipate that the window will shatter. It does so because the man reaches out his arm (perhaps as an automatic response to the shove). While I don't know the applicable police procedures, I suspect that police officers are authorized to push a resisting individual against a wall to facilitate handcuffing him/her. As the video demonstrates, trying to incapacitate someone while standing in the middle of a room isn't easy.

Quite honestly, I think the most remarkable elements of this video are (1) the applause the officer receives for pulling the man out of the train; (2) the fact that platform windows are not made with shatter-proof plastic; and (3) the way the passengers walk and stand around right next to the arrested man. What's up with that?

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on November 23, 2009 (boomark / email).