**IMPORTANT UPDATE ADDED**
This clip is the latest in a series of police conduct controversies. It’s hard to tell just what’s going on through much of it, but viewers see an officer wrestle a student into a wall, draw a gun, aim the firearm at the student briefly and then put the weapon back in the holster.

After more wrestling the scene cuts to another room, where a door opens and the officer comes tumbling in, back to the floor. The student attacks the officer, who draws his gun again. The student backs out the door, and the clip ends.

I’m no expert on police procedure (though I’ve researched and weighed in on it for other blog posts; in the interests of disclosure, my father is a retired Wisconsin State Trooper). It’s important here to compare the officer’s behavior to other incidents and established procedures, rather than to act appalled by any sign of violence.

For starters, it seems that drawing weapons is common. From the Examiner:

“Every day Cincinnati police officers might draw their guns dozens of times.

“They’ll tell you it depends upon their shift, how busy the day is and whether they work, for example, in Mount Lookout or Avondale.”

(Dozens of times a day seems a bit much, but you get the point.)

But from the same report, the rule is:

“An officer can ‘display’ a firearm when he perceives a threat of loss of life or serious physical harm to himself or others.”

There may well be a backstory viewers don’t see (such is often the case with “brutality” videos), but from the looks of things the first draw was unnecessary. It happens with the suspect firmly held at arm’s length — indeed, that’s the only time the officer seems to control the situation. The kid’s back is to the officer. Instead of handcuffing the student, the officer drew his gun, put it back, and kept on wrestling. From there, things apparently spiraled out of control.

That said, the second draw seems completely justified. The officer was in a compromised position, literally flat on his back, with an aggressive suspect physically assaulting him.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://www.therationale.com.

UPDATE: A very perceptive commenter has noticed that, according to the two different cameras’ timestamps, the second clip actually happened first. As the commenter said, “That changes the dynamic significantly.” Indeed, it now appears that after being attacked, the officer wrestled the offender outside, pushed the student to the wall, drew his gun, and then led the suspect off (though said suspect is still resisting a bit). The lack of handcuffs — and the gun drawn while the student is facing away — still bothers me, but this is an important observation.

I’ve often pointed out how misleading police videos are, but that’s usually because the camera clicks on after the offender punches the cop, and just before the cop punches the offender. This one appears edited to make the cop look bad, presuming the timestamps, just seconds apart, are accurate on the two cameras.