I don't get why people think you would be less lucky to get tazed. I would much rather be tazed than punched.
Unless it's Mrs. Noriega behind you who is unable to tell her tazer from her gun (and who files a
lawsuit against the taser manufacturer on terms of "I am too retarded to tell a tazer from a gun, it's all your fault").
But on a serious note, in this discussion, there is the "the cops are right, why did you have to act like a dick anyway" faction, and there is the "cops are Nazis, fuck the cops" faction (I belong to the latter one, as you can probably tell), and I don't think there will ever be any kind of consensus between those two extremes.
It is probably true that at least some cops have a hard job, and that at least some of them risk their lives dealing with criminals, and some of them probably even try to do the right thing. It is probably true as well that if someone behaves like a dick, he deserves being punched... kind of. However, in any case,
it is not the cop's job to judge who deserves it.
On top of that, in many places the authorities (i.e. legal criminals) are not interested in actually finding the culprit at all. In theory, the police exists to serve you, the citizen, and to protect you, the citizen, from harm. That's what you learn in elementary school, and that's how it should be.
In practice, the cops are only interested in having the biggest "successes" (i.e. blaming and destroying someone, not necessarily the culprit) in the minimum time, and they will harrass and damage innocent people in their way irrespectively of what happens to anyone. Because, you know, they're the law, so they're right. And, accusing so and so many (no matter whether they're guilty) gets you a promotion. Criminalizing innocent people is more rewarding than catching real criminals too, because other than from some hobo who has nothing to lose, you don't have to fear retaliation from a respectable man who has a wife, a job, and a home.
I've once lost my job to these Nazis, though I've never broken the law even as much as neglecting a red traffic light. The only thing I ever did "wrong" was to refuse a "voluntary" DNA mass sampling. But hey, that's enough justification to spread libel at your employer and in your neighbourhood about you being a child murderer!
Almost a decade has passed since then and they've still not arrested or even interrogated me (or anyone else for that matter), so it would seem that the evidence didn't
quite match up to the libel. And still, I lost my job and I had to move to another city. Great. To serve and to protect, huh.
So, you will excuse me for being
somewhat biased, but... I cannot help but think that a dead cop is a good cop, and every drug dealer who has shot a cop should be granted amnesty and possibly awarded a prize (I'm in good company with that opinion, because certain people who used to say "if you kill one of those pigs it ain't no damage" three decades ago are now ministers in my country...). A cop punching someone who didn't commit a crime in the face should see some serious legal consequences. And that is independent of the fact whether that person acted "suspiciously" or not. I do agree that Prune's behaviour was was really stupid, but so what. You've got every darn right in the world to act as stupid as you like. Agreed, you might have to answer some stupid questions for your stupid acting, but hey... that's kind of justified.
However, acting like an jerk doesn't give anyone (cop or not) the right to injure you. Not unless you're a danger to someone else in the first place.
