Footage capturing an aggressive arrest by Austin police of a non-violent jaywalker yesterday near the University of Texas campus is spurring outrage.

Witnesses say a jogger wearing headphones ran past an officer and was quickly subdued for jaywalking. She was later arrested for failing to produce identification.

“I was sitting at the Starbucks at 24th and San Antonio,” one witness told The Daily Texan. “Then I hear a cop shout at an innocent girl jogging through West Campus with her headphones on.”

“She repeatedly pleaded with them, saying that she was just exercising and to let her go,” the witness said.

The woman jogger, who looked to weigh no more than 110 pounds, apparently required four burly APD officers, two on bikes, unashamed about being caught on camera as the scene played out in broad daylight in full public view, to place her in the back of a squad car.

In footage of the incident, the woman can be heard saying, “I did nothing wrong,” and “I was crossing the street,” to which the person filming the event acknowledges, “I saw you.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong,” the woman screams as she’s placed in the back of a squad car. “I didn’t fucking do anything wrong. I just crossed the street.”

The photo above depicts the pain being inflicted on the woman during the arrest stemming from the punishing position officers are holding her hands, an awkward extended and high-behind-her-back contortion.

The torturous pose is reminiscent of a notorious 2012 Austin arrest in which officers manhandled a female passenger of a vehicle after she gave her friend advice about not having to submit to a sobriety test.

Ex-marine and activist Antonio Buehler documented the incident and was also later arrested himself after one cop claimed he spit in his face, an allegation Buehler vehemently denies.

In the jogger’s case, APD spokespersons told the Texan officers “proactively” patrol the area around the UT campus conducting overall pedestrian and bike safety enforcement, but that there was no specific initiative in place to target jaywalkers.

This is just one more example of how the police state apparatus is encroaching on the private lives of citizens and more activities are becoming regarded as thought crimes, with everyone being guilty until proven innocent.

Update: Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, in response to the deluge of negative press over the incident, issued a statement Friday defending the officers and saying they “had cause to detain & arrest.”

“Thank you, lord, that it is a controversy in Austin, Texas – that we actually have the audacity to touch somebody by the arm and tell them, ‘Oh my goodness Austin police we’re trying to get your attention’,” Acevedo said in a statement published in the Austin American Statesman, ignorant of the fact that if a citizen touched a cop in this manner it would be deemed “assault.”

After reviewing audio and video reports, the police chief said he also thought 24-year-old jogger Amanda Jo Stephen’s “limp routine” was an act.

“She did the limp routine, and in 28 years of law enforcement, I can tell you it happens all the time,” Acevedo said, according to the Statesman. “Quite frankly she wasn’t charged with resisting and she’s lucky I wasn’t the arresting officer because I wouldn’t have been as generous.”

One of the witnesses, Chris Quintero, who also photographed the event and blogged about it, told the Statesman he thought Stephen could have handled it better. “Looking at the video it was not too bad,” Quintero stated. “Up until that point, I think (officers were) a little excessive. … But (Stephen) started yelling and making commotion. I think she handled it poorly.”

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Most of us have at one point or another been pulled over by a police officer. Usually, it’s speeding, running a red light, a stop sign, something of that nature. What happened to Scott Nesin and his wife in Electra last March did not involve a traffic stop, at least not in the sense you might suspect.

According to Nesin, he and his wife had pulled over along US 287 in Electra to switch drivers. Two Electra Police Department officers, Matt Wood and Gary Ellis, pulled over behind the Nesins’ van. What could have been, or should have been, a fairly routine event quickly escalated — but who bears the responsibility for the escalation?

Nesin says Officer Wood opened the passenger side van door and conducted what he called an unconstitutional search, a search which he verbally objected to. That’s when things began to blow up a bit. The incident did end up in the courtroom of Judge Diane Gribble. During a hearing, Nesin obtained a copy of the dash cam video of the incident Nesin uploaded the video to YouTube and it has since gone viral.

The video gets very disturbing towards the end, but you need to watch all of it to put everything into its proper perspective.

Calls to the Electra Police Department and City offices have not been returned.

After watching the video, leave a comment below and let us know what you think about it.

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The video gets very disturbing towards the end, but you need to watch all of it to put everything into its proper perspective.

Calls to the Electra Police Department and City offices have not been returned.

After watching the video, leave a comment below and let us know what you think about it.

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THIS IS A VIDEO CHECK ON IT:

Years ago, members of my extended family were gangsters connected with the Genovese crime family. They had the ability, which they used, to place people in favored positions within the New York City Police Department. I know this, because my father was offered one of those slots.

This is a big part of why I’ve always had a problem with claims that you can trust the police, in addition to the civil liberties abuses we report at Reason. Cops can be as crooked as anybody else–and are more dangerous for it, because of their power and position. It’s the old problem of “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”–”Who watches the watchmen?” The more you give the watchmen to do, the more tempting it becomes to corrupt them, and for them to let themselves be corrupted. And the more temptation for corruption, the more the likelihood that such temptation is the main attraction for people who want to be watchmen.

That temptation sometimes really is the main attraction. Remembering some of the old family stories, I asked my father for details. He told me:

The time was 1954 when I was graduating from high school and my Uncle Puggy, Watermelon King of the East Coast, who presided over the Bronx Terminal Market, told my father he was wasting his money sending me to college. He could get me a beat around the market, located in the South Bronx before it moved to Hunts Point, where I could get on the family’s payroll and get an envelope stuffed with cash every week.

Puggy was called “the Watermelon King” because the New York Daily News once published a picture of him standing on top of a mountain of watermelons. The photo illustrated an article pointing out that he extracted his cut from every banana, every tomato, every kind of fruit and vegetable known to mankind that passed through the Bronx Terminal Market. And, if you’re going to be in that kind of business, it’s helpful to own the people who are supposed to prevent that sort of thing from happening. Puggy did. He wanted my father to join in the lucrative fun.

My father decided not to go that route.

Family Says Moore Police Beat Father To Death Video by TAT’S 2 MIN NEWS

The law enforcement connections continued and expanded. At the end of the 1960s, that crew pulled off an art heist that was elegant in execution, but went to hell pretty quickly. As it turned out the buyers they arranged were FBI agents. But the thieves were tipped off that the buyers were feds. And they were tipped off about a raid on a house where the paintings had been stored. As my father tells me, “they probably had a plant in the FBI as well.” (If you’re interested, and it’s a hell of a tale, you can read the full story of the heist in Gallery of Fools.)

None of this is news to anybody who remembers Frank Serpico’s revelations about the NYPD. But it’s also something that doesn’t go away. My father’s brief opportunity for a law (non)enforcement career passed 60 years ago. The Knapp Commission convened over four decades ago. But the NYPD still faces allegations of corruption, including traditional ticket-fixing, outright theft of cash and jewels, and taking bribes to deliver accident reports to doctors and clinics who then market their services to the victims.

Honest cops who blow the whistle still suffer retaliation for their pains.

Not that the NYPD should be singled out. Baltimore cops have been accused of working as muscle for drug dealers. Cops elsewhere have been drug dealers, taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by their badges to shut down competitors in the illegal but highly profitable trade and keep the opportunities for themselves

And then there are the FBI agents who got tight with Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.

THIS IS A VIDEO CHECK ON IT:

Some of this corruption overlaps with civil liberties violations committed in the course of police work. Those jewel-stealing cops mentioned above also gained a taste for gathering evidence in the absence of warrants. It’s probably not surprising that police officers who engage in theft, accept bribes, and carve out illegal narcotics empires might find the Fourth Amendment an unimpressive barrier to further depredations.

There may be no way of doing entirely without professional police forces that are paid and empowered to enforce the laws to some extent (though I’m very willing to consider alternatives). Like many things in life, there’s probably no perfect fix. But, so long as we have police forces, we’re going to have a problem with police who abuse their positions and succumb to corruption. We’ll also have a problem with people who become cops just so they can exploit the opportunity to engage in abuse and get an envelope stuffed with cash every week, offered by the likes of Uncle Puggy.

Asking police officers to suppress highly profitable activities where there’s money to be had just for looking the other way is just begging for trouble.

That’s enough reason to give extra thought to every job, tool, power, legal protection, and consideration given to police officers. And it’s reason to turn a skeptical eye on the people we’ve hired to keep the peace. Because, in the end, the only people watching the watchers are those realistic enough to admit that it’s necessary.

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EUHARLEE – A teenage boy who was about to graduate high school to join the Marines has been executed by a female officer.

17 year old Christopher Roupe was shot and killed just moments after sitting down to watch a movie. At 7:30 pm, Christopher took his Wii remote controller and started a movie when he heard a knock at the door. He responded to the knock by saying, “who is it”? There was no response. Christopher got up from his chair and opened the door. To his amazement, it was a female police officer, who had her gun drawn and pointed at him according to the reports.

The police officer fired a fatal shot, that pierced into Christophers chest, killing him, according to his aunt, Renee Vance. The police claimed, “he had a gun”. The boy’s aunt said it was the “Wii” controller.

The Police were actually at the home regarding a “probation” matter that had nothing to do with Christopher. According to reports, Christopher’s sister held him in her arms, trying to comfort her brother as he lay in pain. The report goes on to say, that’s when the officer pointed the gun at the child and told her to shut up. Moments later Christopher bled to death.

The family has set up a Facebook page to inform the public, friends and family about the incident.