The video shows him stealing cigars, then shoving the proprietor out of his way, then threatening/menacing him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... That's theft and assault by any definition. No he didn't' have a gun and empty out the til, but I think you're splitting hairs. This event speaks quite a bit to his character, and his mood at the time.

Well, now you seem to be suggesting that some videos - which may not even show the full context of an event - speaks for all cops and all situations.
Regards videoing cops, BTW, I agree with the ACLU here. Notice they don't recommend getting belligerent or physical. When I said, "Do what they say" I mean within common sense. If they ask for ID, don't say "Fuck off, you have no right to see my ID". That's the kind of thing that starts trouble. If they say, "step back you're too close", that probably won't hurt to comply. But I do support the right to video anything that occurs in the public domain. If you do as the ACLU here suggests, I'd be very surprised if that resulted in violence.

All this said, my "Don't be so melodramatic" was maybe a bit harsh in it's verbiage and I apologize for the way that came out. I should have said, "That's a bit melodramatic" or something less confrontational.

And I could show you more videos where cops are shot or killed because someone they pulled over suddenly attacked. No wonder they're on edge. Every single stop is a potential threat. Hindsight is wonderful, and it's easy to say that this or that wasn't a serious threat after the fact. Sure some cops are assholes, and that's a fact, but don't give them a reason to escalate it. If you're stopped, do what they say, and don't fight back. Don't give them a mouthful of shit. Don't wave around a weapon or what appears to be a weapon, and the likelihood of injury or death is dramatically reduced. Is this so hard to understand, or are we all on the "cops are killer assholes" bandwagon?
I mentioned the rap sheets because up until the recent public deaths of Brown, Garner, and Gray, this was nowhere near the issue is suddenly is now. I never said "all". But as long you're looking into the statistics of who got killed by police, go ahead and look again, and see how many of those have previous arrests and histories of legal trouble.
My point is, the average slashdot nerd here who gets pulled over for speeding or something isn't going to get shot to death if he/she just behaves normally.

Lastly, "unarmed man" doesn't necessarily mean anything. In some cases it does, but not all, not necessarily. Example: a perp can be "unarmed", but if he's physically assaulting the officer, grabbing for his gun, he can damn well expect to get shot. And cops are trained to only use the weapon for deadly force, otherwise leave it holstered. In those cases "unarmed" is largely meaningless, as the "unarmed" guy was desperately attempting to change his status to armed and dangerous.

I'm not saying it never happens, I'm just saying it shouldn't be "not unexpected". It's not the norm, not statistically, not realistically. Far more people die every year in a car crash; do we get in our cars everyday expecting to be killed in it?

Actually, I didn't omit that. It's in my original post.

One or two cases are exceptions, not the rule.

Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray all had numerous previous arrests. In Brown's case,it's foggier because he'd only just turned 18 and juvenile records are difficult to get in Missouri, but considering he'd just held up a store owner 20 minutes earlier, he was hardly a model citizen.

You guys are hilarious. Did you not see the post I replied to?

"The biggest risk to you is that you die. Less likely than being arrested and having to spend money on a lawyer and so on, but piss off the wrong cop in America and ending up shot, choked to death, beaten to death, etc isn't an unexpected outcome."

This is the lie. It *is* an unexpected outcome. Not an impossible one unfortunately, but how many arrests in the US in the past 18 months have resulted in a death, as a percentage of total arrests? -especially those arrests where no one was resisting arrest or fighting the officer, then they're even more rare.
Y'all are painting with a mighty broad brush.. a brush made of straw.

.."Or waved around what appeared to be a weapon and refused to drop it when ordered to do so."..

And you are a capital abusing mouthbreather.
Major reading comprehension fail. Even so, one incident hardly sets a standard. How many people in the US are arrested daily? How many result in deaths? Let's not act like interaction with a cop, even an arrest, is a death sentence, statistically that's just not so, not even close.

Don't be so melodramatic. The ones who died at the hands of the cops are those with multiple infractions and long rap sheets who physically resisted arrest. Or waved around what appeared to be a weapon and refused to drop it when ordered to do so.
Don't resist arrest, don't get into a wrestling match with a cop; especially don't make a grab for his gun, and you will have nearly zero chance of getting killed or abused.
That all said, we all certainly have a right to record anything in public, and no cop should tell you otherwise. Hell, it might even be to their benefit sometimes, as a lot of videos don't supply full context or show the events leading up to an arrest.

Is all the damn vampires.

Okay, okay, actually that was the fictional town of Santa Carla, but that's a mere anagram away.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...

I'm surprised it took so long for such learned men (and women) to figure that out. I get elusive, I get intermittent... but still.. 17 freaking years. They already knew it mainly happened during office hours, that should have been a good place to start.

That might've been an honest mistake..? It's not like they get commission or anything. Who knows.

My thoughts exactly, on just about every billing error ever.
How often do you hear of (or more likely, have experienced) a billing error that benefits the customer? Not very damned often. Granted, if/when it does happen, it's likely the benefactor keeps his mouth shut so you don't hear of it happening as much, but then again, OTOH when they get "caught" (you know the accountants will track those errors down eventually), that nullifies it anyway. Yet I bet nearly every one of us has dealt with at least one error or oversight that benefits the company, anything from an overcharge to even just refusing to honor (or losing) a coupon or rebate, and they had no intention of addressing it on their own.
Bottom line is, these things aren't errors so much as they are, at worst, malicious and deliberate, to at best, "yeah we suspect something is off but it's not hurting us so let's not look too closely into that".