The beating in New Orleans of 64-year-old Robert Davis is all over the news. So much so that I feel driven – perhaps prematurely – to decide. We all have such moral decisions to make, and I try not to rush it.

I’ve decided that the cops were wrong; they were brutal.

Watching the video, slowly, repeatedly, as the news people insist I do, I see not only cruelty but bald incompetence. I see police officers so ill-trained, or so forgetful of their training, they appear as frantic teenage thugs, training to subdue a frightened, weakly man. Their lawyer says their actions were justified by his resistance. Is this how they handle every arrest in which someone resists? Aren’t they trained how to take hold of someone and get his hands behind his back, without punching him in the head?

When I was young, the police rarely resorted to wrestling holds and tackles to arrest anyone. Making someone lie on the ground – as a matter of preliminary procedure – wasn’t done at all. They tried first to simply handcuff the person standing up, frisk him, place him in the car.

I don’t know when or how this habit started, of making people lie on the ground, or get down on their knees, but it’s wrong. Unless the cops have a damn good reason – a serious probable cause – to believe that person is armed, every citizen should be treated with dignity. Hey – they police work for us, for crying out loud!

I remember a cop, who was our scout leader, saying that in his career he’d never drawn his gun on a citizen, because he said you don’t draw it unless you intend to fire it, and you don’t fire it unless you intend to kill. He’d never been forced to kill anyone, so the gun was always holstered. Now, they pull their guns all the time. Have we all changed? Our whole society, in one generation? Or have the cops changed?

In the Davis case, no pretext was ever made to treat this man as a citizen innocent until proven guilty. They simply tackled him like wild thugs, beat him, subdued him. And as far as the charges against him, the last time I checked, we all still had the right to resist an unlawful arrest.

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