We can’t say for sure whether the police officers in that Washington Heights video used excessive force. But it’s dead certain that the video doesn’t remotely tell the whole story — because videos never do.
The six minutes look bad — particularly when one officer opens his baton and swings it at a civilian’s head. As a police source told The Post, that’s a direct violation of NYPD guidelines: “The head is a red zone.”
Yet Michael Gonzalez, the passerby who caught the action on his cellphone, has said from the start that it leaves out what went on before: The two alleged victims going after the cops — harassing officers who were responding to complaints about men smoking and blocking a stairway at the 168th Street station.
The men, ID’d as Aaron Grissom and Sydney Williams, were the aggressors, and the cops were “just defending themselves,” says Gonzalez.
Grisson and Williams also have records — 30 prior arrests between them, according to law-enforcement sources, including eight involving fights with police. They were arrested together last month for a similar altercation with cops at the same station.
And Williams has bragged on Facebook about how his brawling with police is about “getting paid” and that he has four lawsuits pending against the city. Cops “can’t touch me because they get hurt and I get paid. I got three lawsuits and working on No. 4,” he says in the 2017 video.
If Grissom and Williams turn out to be provocateurs who were looking for a payday, the real outrage here is what’s not on the videotape.
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