A retired NYPD detective and
so called law enforcement consultant, which is pretty terrifying.
Man by the name of Tom Verni was on CNN to discuss a brutal police
beating that took place in Arkansas.
The beating involved one man with three cops on top of him,
kicking him, punching him and banging his head against the pavement.
Now, CNN had this so called law enforcement consultant on to discuss
whether this clearly excessive force is in any way justified.
So let's go to the first clip and see what this guy has to say.
>> When you look at the video, just based on the video clip,
it seems as if the amount of force that was being used may have been excessive.
Police across the United States are trained in the use of force and
what level of force is appropriate for the incident at hand.
Now as was reported, we don't see what happened leading up to that end.
In the video itself,
you can see that the suspect is not complying with the officers.
He's moving around, he's not allowing them to place handcuffs on him to secure him to
be able to be transported.
So, playing devil's advocate when someone is resisting arrest and
they are refusing to comply with the police.
What happens is that escalates that situation to where now
police have to amp up their level of force from verbal commands to some level or
varying levels of physical force or other levels.
>> There were three cops on top of him, he was very clearly restrained,
put him in handcuffs and put him in the back of the police cruiser.
Why do you need to bang his head against the pavement.
That makes absolutely no sense.
We all see the video, but
Cenk this is the point that I'm trying to make right about the Arkansas state police
doing the investigation on the three cops involved in this incident.
The police protect the police,
at the end of the day the state police are still police.
They cover for one another.
You have this former NYPD detective, he's retired.
He doesn't have to worry about job security.
And this guy is like, looking at this case and trying to make excuses for
what we saw on tape.
>> Yeah, I actually have one slight disagreement with you.
I don't think he's making excuses.
I think he's just saying what he thinks is perfectly normal.
And for most cops that's perfectly normal.
If you don't comply with my orders,
of course I'm gonna smash your head into the pavement.
I've never seen a cop on TV, in the media anywhere,
look I can't vouch for what they say in private, right?
[LAUGH] Sometimes we see what they say in private with leaked text and
it's way worse.
But now those are the bad guys, right?
And I'm sure they're good guys within the police force.
Having said that whenever I see them,
they're always saying maximum force is awesome, I love it.
I think, And besides loving it, I just think it's perfectly normal.
It's exactly what we should do.
An internal investigation after internal investigation of the police
confirmed that they were following guidelines.
They kinda do teach them to do that.
Maybe not smash their head into the pavement,
but subdue them by significant force.
And if you're a cop out there and you're pretending they didn't teach you that,
come on, get the hell out of here, even you don't believe that.
>> Well, in the next video you'll see Jim Sciutto,
the CNN host try to challenge that narrative a little bit.
So let's take a quick look at that.
Forgive me cuz when I watched that video and I've watched it a number of times,
some of the movement I see the suspect doing is to cover his head.
And I wonder as you know better than us,
there is training not just in level of force but tactics.
What specific means of force officers can and should use to subdue a suspect.
And I'm asking, you see the multiple punches to the head and
then I'm gonna let this continue as disturbing as it is.
There's a point at which one of the officers appears to be banging his head on
the pavement.
Is that tactic taught and right there,
is that tactic taught in any police training to subdue a suspect?
>> That specific tactic of banging someone's head into the ground, no.
If you're in a fight for your life, you use whatever force
is necessary to make sure that you can escape from that incident.
>> So the follow up question should naturally be,
do you believe that those cops, particularly the one who was banging his
head against the pavement, was in fear for his life?
That's the follow up question.
Now, they didn't ask that follow up question unfortunately.
But if they're not trained to do that with one exception,
which is they fear for their life, do you believe that that cop banging
that guy's head in the pavement was in fear for his life?
>> Yeah.
So, I think the cable news anchor accidentally asked a really good question.
First let me give him credit, it was a good follow up,
I'm glad he asked the follow up, right?
But then he had to put in there, I mean, you're the expert,
you would know better than us.
No, he's the person who's most biased on the set.
He's probably done very similar things.
So he's the least objective person.
And he's gonna give you the very worst perspective on this,
which is the cops are always right.
That's not journalism, that's not news, that's just bring out
a cop to do cop propaganda on your show about police abuse.
And then there's that follow up should have obviously happened Anna.
And so bottom line is, what he said,
hey I know we're not taught that tactics specifically.
Well, that's exactly what I just said, isn't it?
Right before you saw the video.
In other words, yeah we do tactics like that and yeah,
of course we're taught that.
But no cable news anchor will ever follow up with, wait, isn't that horrible?
The training that almost all cops in the country received to kick the living crap
out of the citizens is awful training, that of course they're never gonna ask.
>> Now there's a final video that I wanna get to and it has to do with the mental
health of the person who is getting beaten by these three cops, let's watch.
>> In the video as a matter of fact, they mentioned there's a woman screaming that,
he's not, he needs his medication [INAUDIBLE].
That would seem to indicate that he may need some sort of maybe anti
psychotic medication or some other medication to control himself.
And when people are supposed to be on medication and they're not, they many
times will have the strength of 10 men and it's hard to subdue someone like that.
>> Really, that's your expert information, you're health expert now and
you're aware of mentally ill people off their medication and their strength level.
I mean, I don't know maybe I'm wrong Cenk, have you ever heard that,
that if someone isn't on the medication they need for
their mental health condition, they somehow magically become Iron Man.
>> Yeah, no, that's how Hulk happened.
It was gamma rays plus being off your medication and then you turn green.
No, but cops have been using nonsense and
oftentimes racist justification for as long as I've been alive.
They assume and this was proven in studies that black men and
black boys are way stronger than they appear to be.
That's what cops think.
And so they beat up and shoot black boys at a much greater rate.
Now they have this excuse that anyone who might be off their medication is hulk or
she hulk and that they need to, again beat the crap out of them.
And second of all, Anna think about the opposite side of this,
I hope I'm a halfway decent human being.
I thought, he's off his medication.
So the cops should be more careful with him, not beat him up more.
But for the cop, his first point is, well, if he's off his medication and
that's why he's doing things that are not rational, we should hit him harder.
And that just right there is stunning to morality,
anyone who's a decent moral person.
But that's why harp on the training because we teach our cops to be
immoral and indecent.
>> And one other thing I just want to mention cuz Cenk correctly
noted that oftentimes the superpower strength trope is used in
regard to a black suspect, in this case the suspect is white.
So as far as we know, there is not a racial component here, but
it doesn't matter.
I mean he's using the exact same ridiculous argument of, what could we do?
These three cops were just outmanned by this one individual who was on the ground,
face down with three of the cops on top of him.
It's a ridiculous argument to make, but
he makes it on national television nonetheless.