San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter: Woman face down on the street New Year's Eve 2010

Prior to this video this woman was being escorted up the street by two officers who were each on one side of her. She seemed to stumble a bit, turning an ankle, and could not keep up with the walking pace the officers were setting for her. Since her feet were stationary and her body was being pulled forward at the elbows, gravity shortly took over and she began to fall forward. While able to arrest her, the officers could not do the same for her fall. And, since her hands were cuffed behind her back, she could not brace herself and fell face first onto the street where she then lay motionless. The time from when she fell to the start of this video is approximately 15 to 20 seconds.

This video was shot using an unconcealed FLIP video camcorder. It was taken from the sidewalk in an area that was accessible to the public. My layman's impression is that none of the subjects in the video had any reasonable expectation of privacy.

While fire department paramedics were called after her fall, the woman was placed into the back of a police car and driven away before the EMT's arrived. This seems to indicate that no serious injuries were sustained in the fall. The EMT's arrived about one minute after she was taken away.

While recognizing that the task that police do in crowd situations like this is a difficult one, it does not seem realistic, given the proliferation of devices designed to record video, that police should seek to engage in activities that prevent or hinder the lawful documentation of their duties.

Since many people have a degree of antipathy towards police and since many other people just want to sell you Viagra, any comments on this video, on this site, will be moderated in an attempt to keep such comments on topic

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• Year's
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