A video was posted on Youtube of U of Western campus police attempting to arrest a violent individual on campus and visibly punching and hitting the offender caused some question at the University as to whether the amount of force they used was actually necessary. Irnes Zeljkovic, 22, had been involved in a number of violent confrontations during the day, had barricaded himself in a student's 7th floor dorm and when police arrived to confront him, he started punching the responding officers and then fled. The video shows a half dozen police officers punching Irnes and yelling very audibly to stop resisting, all while trying to handcuff him. He was charged with assault of an officer, resisting arrest and mischief under $5000.
While the suspect clearly needed to be restrained, the question is whether police really needed to use the kind of force they did. A single student could not be much of a threat to 6 or 7 police officers all trying to restrain him, so however violent the suspect was, it probably still shouldn't have escalated to what it eventually became. He was unarmed, so unless he was much stronger than the officers, which is highly unlikely, the officers should not have used violence to restrain him.
The video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17mj553jzhM
The article courtesy of The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/youtube-video-sparks-uproar-at-western/article1324695/
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