Cop Caught Slamming Cyclist To The Ground On YouTube Indicted

from the fighting-back dept

Over the summer, you may have seen the video that got passed around quite a bit of a NYC police officer going out of his way to slam a Critical Mass cyclist to the ground. As you may have heard, the officer wrote up a report claiming that the cyclist ignored his commands to stop and tried to steer his bike into the him. From the video, that's obviously false, though the cyclist ended up having to spend a day in jail based on the report: The good news is that the officer, Patrick Pogan, has now been indicted and charged both with a misdemeanor assault and felony counts for falsifying his report. Obviously, none of this would have transpired if it weren't for the tourist filming what happened and then putting the video up on YouTube. We talk about abuses of power via technology quite often, but it's good to see an abuse of power stopped thanks to technology as well.

Filed Under: critical mass, new york, police, police violence, youtube