I listened to a podcast recently about a young man who had a violent encounter with a plain-clothes police officer in Stockton, CA back in 2011. The young man, a sixteen-year-old boy, was trying to buy candy for his sister at a gas station convenience store, and the clerk didn’t want to take the torn dollar bill on offer. As the two argued, it so happened that standing in line behind the young man was a Stockton PD officer in plain clothes. He decided to intervene, and the young man told him to mind his own business – not knowing at first that his assailant was a police officer. Eventually, the young man agreed to leave the store, and it could have just ended there, but the officer decided to grab the young man and throw him to the ground, punch him repeatedly, and arrest him. A jury later found that the officer had used excessive force and had no cause to accost the young man in the first place. So why did he do it?
Fantastic piece