The news story is here, and the video is here.
It all started in an IHOP at 4 am, involved 4 girls going out for an early breakfast (or late dinner), two men dressed as Darth Vader and Boba Fett, and two portly police officers who slapped and then slugged a woman, pulling her dress up and flashing her panties to the entire restaurant while he's on top of her.
The woman? White, dark haired and probably a buck twenty. Definitely not a threat.
What started the melee is unclear. Freeman said she and her friends were seated at the first table near the front door of the IHOP. She was speaking to her friends about two nearby restaurant patrons who were dressed like characters -- Boba Fett and a Storm Trooper -- from the Star Wars films before the off-duty APD officer approached.
“He just attacked me,” Freeman said, “And I said, ‘What did I do? What did I do? I didn’t do anything.”
“I’m sitting with my friends, and I’m talking to the Darth Vadar guys, just on a casual conversation ... and then he just out of nowhere came to me, out of all of the people, came to me,” she said later.
“I didn’t touch this man, never, not once,” she said. “I didn’t pay him any attention what he had on. I was just looking at his face because he was yelling.”
According to several videos posted on YouTube.com, the officer, whose name police have not provided, shouted at a woman sitting in the corner of a booth near the door and then he lunged at her. A woman wearing a black dress appeared to be trying to separate the officer and her friend when the officer slapped her. The woman in the black dress hit him back, and he punched her in the face.
A second officer came up just as the struggle began. He got involved when it became physical between the first cop and the woman in the black dress, apparently trying to separate them. The first officer pulled the woman away from the table, threw her onto the floor and laid on top of her while trying to get handcuffs on one wrist. The second wrist was cuffed when she turned over on her stomach.
Within moments, a female officer appeared to hold back the crowd while the woman in the black dress, shoeless, was led out of the restaurant.
The officer involved in the incident has been placed on administrative duty pending the outcome of an investigation, an Atlanta police spokesman said.
For more on police brutality in America, please continue below the fold.
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