Meet Blankfein’s buddy, Officer Badass

A young man is pushed and wrestled to the ground by a cop, then handcuffed. His crime? Not immediately retreating as the cop swaggered toward him on the sidewalk. The victim appears to say something to the cop right before the assault. Maybe “Why are you harassing peaceful protesters?” Or just “Why?”

Whatever he said, his actions clearly weren’t posing a threat to the cop.

The video shows, for anyone who cares to see it, how quickly cops in America can fly out of control in situations that involve large or small groups exercising their rights of free speech and assembly. The cop in this video isn’t behaving like a law officer but rather like a thuggish corner boy in the Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood where I grew up. (He’s also behaving like the cops in that neighborhood, but that’s another story.)

Videos that show similar misbehavior by cops at Occupy Wall Street are posted on Huffington Post, and many other videos are likely to appear online if police violence continues.

This is how journalism often happens these days. Increasingly, journalism does not happen through America’s corporate-controlled mainstream media, which have all but ignored the Wall Street protests for the eight days they’ve been in progress. I’m sure Lloyd Blankfein and the other banksters are grateful.

Footnote: If the protests were in Cairo rather than on Wall Street, The New York Times would have put them on its front page.