Thankfully we have them now. And instead of time spent behind bars (like so many black men out here), Marcus Jeter is a free man, and it is the officers that arrested him who are facing charges.
"As soon as they opened the door, one officer reached in and punched me in my face. As he's trying to take off my seat belt, I'm thinking, 'Something is going to go wrong.'"
Jeter says the cops continued hitting him, telling him not to resist arrest.
"And when they open the [police cruiser] door, about to put me in, the officer hits me in the back of the head again," Jeter said.
The incident began when police responded to a domestic violence call at the Bloomfield home Jeter shares with his girlfriend. No charges were filed, and Jeter says he left after briefly talking to officers.
Police followed, trailing him along the Garden State Parkway. Dash-cam video shows Jeter pulling over and stopping on the highway shoulder.
The two officers pulled out guns.
Jeter didn't get out of the car. He was afraid.
"There was a cop on my left with a gun pointed at me, a cop on the other side with a shotgun," he said.
The video that was not initially turned over -- from the dashboard of a second police cruiser -- shows a third officer coming from the opposite direction, crossing the median and striking Jeter's car. That incident was not mentioned in any police reports related to the arrest.
As soon as prosecutors saw the second video, they dismissed all of the charges against Jeter.
A grand jury has since indicted two Bloomfield police officers -- Orlando Trinidad and Sean Courter -- on various charges, including conspiracy and official misconduct.
Trinidad was also charged with aggravated assault. Both officers have pleaded not guilty.
The third officer pleaded guilty to tampering. [Source]
Those prosecutors better not be lying about seeing that video tape, because, if they did, that is grounds for prosecutorial misconduct as well.
Speaking of misconduct, have you all seen the video with the poor dude in the Bronx, who broke no laws, and who was just minding his business on a winter day when all hell broke loose?
Watch the video here and tell me what you think.
Honestly, it's hard to watch, because we all know that if that stranger wasn't there with his camera phone rolling that poor dude would have gotten the serious Rodney King treatment.
He got it hard enough as it is, but believe me, it could have been worse.
The video tape might have saved the day once again.
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