A black eye for Metro

The recorded beating of a local man by a Las Vegas police officer is troubling enough for the Metropolitan Police Department. The way the department has responded to the case is only making matters worse.

On the night of March 20, on a darkened street near Desert Inn Road and Maryland Parkway, videographer Mitchell Crooks set up a camera in his driveway and filmed police responding to a burglary at his neighbor's house. Officer Derek Colling saw Mr. Crooks and ordered him to turn the camera off. When Mr. Crooks refused to do so -- telling the officer "I'm perfectly within my legal rights to do this, sir" -- the policeman forcefully brought Mr. Crooks and the camera to the ground.

The Review-Journal obtained the camera's footage of the incident and posted it on the newspaper's website Saturday. Although the lens was aimed away from the altercation, the camera's audio recording is disturbing, revealing an alarming level of hostility from officer Colling in response to someone engaged in a peaceful, lawful activity. Mr. Crooks was arrested, but the district attorney refused to prosecute him.

The Review-Journal first reported the beating on March 26. Prior to the Review-Journal's Saturday posting of the video on the Internet (as well as the publication of a transcript of the arrest), police asserted officer Colling remained on duty. The day the video was released, however, police claimed officer Colling had been suspended with pay since April 1, his actions under internal review. This coincidental change of course is the department's only official acknowledgement that something wrong might have taken place in Mr. Crooks' driveway last month.

That's not right. Sheriff Doug Gillespie owes the community an explanation.

Some observers have pointed out that Mr. Crooks' motivations and actions were not the least bit pure here. After all, he videotaped two Inglewood, Calif., police officers beating a 16-year-old boy in 2002, then tried to sell the footage to prosecutors. In addition, he initially told officer Colling he didn't live on the property from which he was filming, drawing the policeman from his cruiser. Already, Mr. Crooks has demanded $500,000 from Las Vegas police as compensation for the beating.

But these factors in no way justify what the videotape captured. Mr. Crooks was not interfering with police activities. He was recording police from a distance, and officer Colling went out of his way to confront Mr. Crooks.

When Las Vegans see one of their policemen, granted extraordinary powers to protect public safety, become violent at the sight of someone running a videocamera, they have good reason to be concerned about department training standards and oversight. And if officer Colling ultimately receives some form of minor discipline following his paid vacation, with the findings of the department's internal investigation kept secret as a "personnel matter," then public confidence in the integrity of the force will plummet.

We trust Sheriff Gillespie understands as much -- and will explain what's going on with this investigation, sooner rather than later.