[srl]

Sickening.

More sickening still: many people's reaction to this magnitude of brutality (or, actually, to any magnitude of law enforcement's abuse of power) is to rationalize it by saying that the victim was "a criminal".

The unstated logic behind this argument is that, by breaking the law, you forfeit all rights. Poppycock: Nuremberg trials.

(And yes, it is true that the victim is often not, in fact, a criminal. But that has no bearing on whether this sort of treatment should be tolerated.)