He was practically standing still when they tackled him. There was no shout, no order. The first cop hit him squarely from the back, another hit him from the side. They knocked him face down on the pavement, hitting his head on the neighbor’s motorcycle fender. More cops jumped on top. There was no resistance from the guy at all. Now there was a lot of hollering, which seemed to be about handcuffing the guy. It sounded like the cops were saying to each other to get the cuffs on him. There were so many of them — five cops — on the guy, I’m sure it was difficult to do even the simple task of handcuffing an immobilized, unresisting suspect. The guy must have had an even harder time breathing.

The man survived the arrest.

Update: Mission Loc@l has the story on the origins of the police chase and arrest, including a suggestion of why the cops had such hard-ons for the suspect: there was some belief, evidently unfounded, that a police officer had been injured in the chase.

(Disclosure: the author of the Open Salon post is my wife.)