Reading some of these replies makes me despair. I spent most of my working career as a professional campaigner, mostly for peace and human rights organisations - and I joined the police relatively recently. My preconceptions of the police were pretty much that it was full of thick gung-ho sadists, who skirted the edge of the law in their dealing with the public. That sounds pretty much like what many of the commenters here think too. I have to say that the reality is so incredibly far from this. Reynolds calls it a different view of reality - and much of what goes on in town centres at night is like a parallel universe to the one I used to inhabit. The level of violence, and lack of respect for themselves and others that is shown is simply astonishing. Do these people who throw rubbish everywhere, swear, fight, kick, glass, gouge and vandalise with such thoughtless abandon really know what they're doing. People who drink until they're violent or incapable do so with an attitude that if something goes wrong it is clearly someone else, anyone else, who is responsible for whatever happens. The police (and medical staff) who deal with these people have the patience of saints, and show simply enormous restraint. But their training (and here I'm talking about the police) for dealing with conflict and violence is generally excellent - certainly in my experience. Looking at the video in question it looks to me like the officer is using a 'hammer fist' to get a resistant person handcuffed. We simply can't see what is really going on from the video, nor the context in which it is taking place. So many of you seem to have made up your minds that what you see is more than 'reasonable force', that it is retaliation, that the officer has 'snapped' or whatever. Unless you were there, you don't know. With other criminal trials we don't see video released and commented on without any supporting context other than tv interviews with the 'victim' and her dad. It would be sub-judice. Yet, when a police officer is subject to a misconduct hearing it is a free for all. Those (including myself, in my own previous career) who shout the loudest for 'justice' are the same people who when a police officer is accused, are the quickest to pre-judge the issue based on personal prejudice and partial and incomplete information. How can this officer expect to have anything like a fair hearing if the national media is picking over evidence in the misconduct process before it has even taken place. You cannot judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes.