A car-mounted video camera — more commonly used by police than against them — captured a loud and threatening confrontation in this tiny St. Louis County community that left an officer on suspension and the whole world able to listen in.
The picture doesn't show much, but the audio part of the recording, posted on Google Video and YouTube on the Internet, brought more than 300 protest calls to St. George Police Chief Scott Uhrig.
"I was very displeased when I saw the actions on the video," Uhrig said. "My officers are not trained and taught to act like that."
He put Sgt. James Kuehnlein on unpaid suspension pending further investigation.
All good cops feel their hair stand on end when they see a video like this. There is nothing worse than someone abusing their authority. As we have shown in prior articles and investigations there is absolutely nothing worse than someone sworn to uphold the law abusing that authority. These sort of events stain the good men and women of law enforcement with the rotten smell of a bad cop. There is nothing worse. There are no excuses. Shame on all of them.
But the positive side of this is that people are out there, with cameras, witnesses etc that will bring these shameful acts to light. Since there are over 100,000 officers on the street every day the percentage of bad is microscopic.
To all those who serve the public with pride and with professional ethics, we salute you!
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