Keith99

Glad to see one person who gets it. Evaluation depends totally on what did or did not happen before this. Of course as more and more time goes by the more it seems nothing significant happened.

Genec get's it. Before does NOT mean right before, it means what the guy did or did not do 1/2 mile before or 1 or 2 miles before. IF this is a guy who vandalized a car using a U lock of other device I have no problems withthe Cop's actions. But again as more and more time goes by this if is becoming more and more unlikely.

Diesel

The way I see it the cyclist failed to yield to a pedestrian (Cop), but the knock down was unacceptable.

jgmacg

Nothing happened upstream from the point of the video. Nothing. How many times do you have to hear it? Nothing happened to cause this. Nothing.

Read the police complaint in Post #65 on Page 3 of the Road Cycling board:

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...=447008&page=3

The arresting officer clearly lied about the circumstances.

APbikn

Funny, as I saw it different. I saw the cop absolutely targeting this guy from a ways off. The bike was going around the cop, and the cop made a deliberate move to take out the cyclist.

I would have said "I think something happened earlier to cause the cop to do what he did", but HOW he did it is inexcusable. It endangered the public, and the rider (I didn't take the rider as a fleeing felon endangering others).

Others will see it different .....

genec

Look again... the cyclist was moving over and trying to avoid the cop... the cop had to do a little jog to get to the cyclist... There is no way the cop was hit by the cyclist.

genec

Yeah, but as I pointed out... there is no charge against the cyclist to indicate such a crime... Which given the circumstances I think this cop would have been quick to ensure was in his report... but instead the cop says the cyclist hit him... and that is not the case.

TiberiusBTkirk

The entire complaint is on The smoking gun,
all in black and white.

https://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive...9081bike2.html

jgmacg

Nice piece on this today from The Bike Snob...

https://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/

pueblonative

If that cop got hooked that badly by a finger he really doesn't need to be wearing a badge anywhere, least of all New York City.
And what's more the cop almost looks like he's sauntering; that's not the way that I would see somebody replying to an imminent threat.

Bklyn

How anyone can look at this video and see anything but a cop who is fed up with all these jackass cyclists just snapping and taking one out is beyond me. Even this ex-cop has no doubts to his intent.
I think the criticism of Critical Mass is valid, but I also think that CM has shifted into something different from its origins. BikeSnob's criticism of CM (and many of the posters on the excellent Streetsblog.org) make it plain that the ride no longer is necessary to agitate for the cyclist's place on the streets.

But I think that the problem the cops have is not with cyclists; it's with the right to free assembly. And I see no other group anywhere that is as committed to free assembly than Critical Mass. (And my personal opinion? A bunch of gentle freaks on slow bikes doesn't "damage the image of cyclists" any more than Steve Carell in "40-Year-Old Virgin" did.)

fetad

"There was no traffic behind us – there was no traffic to weave in and out of," he told the New York Times.

I saw a whole lot of traffic in that video. Apparently this CMasser shares the opinion of most motorists

Seriously I kid. I just think its good practice to refer to bicycles as apart of traffic.

frymaster

here's a short excperpt from the new york times, july 8 1994

The Mollen Commission has turned up story after story of rogue cops who peddled guns and drugs or sold protection, openly profiting from the brutality that besieges the city's most desperate neighborhoods ...[snip]... The report describes a department whose chain of command has all but broken down. The brass practiced a deliberate "blindness" with respect to packs of predatory cops who ran wild in the city's poorest neighborhoods. The Internal Affairs Division, the report said, "often minimized and even concealed corruption."

now, that was 14 years ago... but the knapp commission was supposed to have cleaned up the police department in the early 70's and that was a failure, so i would assume that mollen didn't make any serious changes either.

bottom line: don't be surprised if a new york cop is brutal, greedy and a liar.

littlewaywelt

deadly force? you're joking, right? go learn what the legal use of deadly force implies...and knocking down a cyclist doesn't even come close. And the odds of getting killed while falling or being knocked off a bike at 10mph are remote at best.

adriel

So I guess this means you bike without a helmet?

dougmc

Probably because unless the video is somehow notable, it's not put up on youtube, and so you don't see it. Most CM rides go down without any incidents.

randya

WTF does this have to do with anything? It's Totally Irrelevant.

randya

https://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.p...4&postcount=36

brooklyncyclist

Two articles in the NY Times today, the first in the print edition, Metro section, front page; the second from the website:

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/ny...l?ref=nyregion

https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...and-the-video/

frymaster

agents provocateurs seems a bit much -- i mean greedy, lazy and violent cops i can "understand", but subjecting cm to the full treatment seems a bit much, doesn't it?

doesn't it?

please say it does.

huhenio

Imagine if the rider died .... and it was you riding from work to home that evening.

randya

In Portland before the start of the current Iraq war, there were numerous bicycle rides loosely organized under the name Critical Mass participating in the antiwar protests. The Portland cops were brutal on the cyclists, hitting them with pepper spray, ramming them to the ground w/ motorcycles, etc., etc. Plenty of plainclothes feds around in unmarked black SUvs. too. Not a stretch to believe that there were also agents provacateurs among the cyclists as well. I'm pretty sure I've seen and heard accounts from NYC where some agents provacateurs were actually identified in photos and video from CM rides, I recall a story in the Village Voice that the NY Times may also have carried sometime between the 04 RNC and last year.

sirpoopalot

here's some background info on the cop: https://animalnewyork.com/news/2008/0...gans-anger.php

frymaster

i admit i've never been to portland, but from all the stuff i hear it seems like the most schizophrenic city on the continent: half the people seem to be either cascadia free staters or "from eugene" and the other half sound like birchers or minutemen.

as for the agents provocateurs -- well, i suppose it's possible. i remember at the demos in montebello there were two or three cops from the surite de quebec dressed as demonstrators who were holding rocks. someone in the crowd pointed out that they were wearing the same type of boots as the riot cops and their cover was blown. hm. of course the surite has probably the worst reputation for competence of any police force in canada, but still...

randya

you've got that about right, in the late 80s and early 90s the area in and around Portland was a focal point of a lot of racist skinheads, there was at least one brutal racial murder in the city attributed to skinhead violence at the time.

frymaster

i remember that very well.