Coming from a law enforcement family, it's really hard to see things like this. It becomes very hard to tell people their negative preconceptions about police are unjustified in the face of apparently stupid and violent things like this.

It's just like anything else: Most cops are not bad or stupid people, but sometimes bad or stupid people are cops. Unfortunately, when bad or stupid people are cops, it's a bigger problem than in most other occupations.

original story with video about incident http://www.wral.com/parents-question-police-response-to-enlo...

I wonder why it was posted as reason.com link, this article is half the thing only.

It certainly sounds like an over reaction by the school and police, but instead of jumping on the police hating bandwagon I'd encourage everyone to realize that this article only tells one side of the story, like so many other of these internet stories.

Reading through the comments on DocG's link, it looks like there MAY be a lot more to this scenario that might even warrant the behavior of the police and the school. Some speculation is saying the balloons may have been full of bleach, for example, which turns the game from harmless fun to actual danger.

That said, this, again, is an instance, as other people have said here, of only telling one side of the story. Honestly, we're not going to hear a complete instance of the other side of the story. Police officer's aren't Spock, and won't produce a perfect replication of the events either. And honestly, in some circles, if the police are called in to something, their mission is to de-escalate the situation as quickly as possible, and that means rather emotionlessly immobilizing anyone who might be seen as a threat. Assuming this was just a harmless water balloon fight, the police shouldn't have needed to have been called in, and then this wouldn't have happened.

That said, police are still humans, and at some level, their mind and emotions do need to come into play; so, if this was a harmless water balloon fight, they could have come in and seen it as such, and handled it differently.

But we don't know the whole story, and so on and so on. We need more information.

Edit: Okay, I also saw the video now. That brief bit of the video, it looks more like the results of being banged against concrete. It doesn't take much to get some pretty substantial scrapes from concrete. I can't tell intensity of force from that brief video, though; nor can I tell if the detained kid was struggling to the point that handcuffing was difficult or impossible.

I do wonder why the man witnessing the altercation was charged with trespassing, though. I liken it to a person coming up to a house on fire as police and firefighters are doing their job. I suppose if they were getting in the way of the police doing their job, they would get a similar charge. We need more information here, too. So much more information..