Not all cops are bad. But oversight keeps them honest. Here's what you can do about it.

The revelations of March 30's assault on another American, Kianga Mwamba, for the crime of videotaping their arrest of Cordell Bruce, is disturbing for several reasons.  First, this happened on March 30th, why are we just now hearing about it?  The cops deleted the video from her phone.  It had to be recovered from her cloud account.  Second, it doesn't seem like she was doing anything wrong.  In the video, her conversation with the police goes from calm to violent in a flash.  It's difficult to see what happened as the phone camera flailed around, but it's clear that things escalated unreasonably fast.  Third, the police officer called her a "dumb bitch" after throwing her on the ground, and claimed she had tried to run over an officer.  Also pretty unreasonable.  And fourth, they tased her.  This has become way too common.

Image from CBS shows some of the injuries Kianga incurred during the altercation

While in custody, Mwamba gave her phone to a police officer to show that she hadn't tried to run over the officer (the car never goes faster than idle in the video) and the video was erased.  She was released with cuts and bruises, but no charges.  It was clearly just a setup to get rid of the video, which doesn't show anything except the excessive force they used to get Mwamba's phone.

It almost seems like they thought she had seen them committing a crime, such as kicking him as they allegedly were right before she started filming.  Interesting.

So how can we protect ourselves?

Video everything.  Keep bringing attention to what is happening on our streets.  These are high profile cases.  If you get arrested, a lawyer will DEFINITELY take up your case pro-bono.  That kind of publicity is priceless.  

One thing I have done is download an iPhone or Android app called Bambuser.  It's a social video sharing app, but it has a few important features.  It automatically uploads WHILE STREAMING, so even if the cops take your phone and try to wipe it, as they did to Kianga, you will still have access from your cloud Bambuser account.  Assuming you have a bad connection, it will only take minutes for your video to be safely uploaded to the cloud.  It also records video even with the screen off, so you can pretend you are taking a phone call while you record.  

Password-locking your phone in some way is good too.  You don't have to use a lockscreen password, I have a custom lockscreen that quizzes me Japanese vocabulary that I prefer to use.  Using an app called AppLock, Android users can lock individual apps with a pin, password or pattern.  iPhone users, you have no options here, but I do recommend you put a lock screen password up.

Stay safe, friends.