The opening of this Reason TV clip (language warning), featuring footage of a plain-clothes DC cop packing heat at snowball fight(!), feels like the original “Back and to the Left” moment in the Maysles’ Gimme Shelter, where the shot of the audience member at Altamont pointing a gun at the stage is rewound several times afterward in the editing room to show Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, and the movie audience as well what happened. Of course, one expected lunatic fans at a 1969 rock concert, complete with Hell’s Angels for security (who very likely saved Jagger’s life), not from trained — at least in theory — police officers:
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A shorter clip, found at Gawker, focuses in on the officer admitting that he pointed his gun, and giving his name as well. Of course, given that this is DC, who know what, if any, disciplinary action will occur:
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Oh, and speaking of Altamont, T-shirts commemorating the death of the 1960s are available in the lobby.
Update: The cop’s in DC — the snowball heaving hipster doofuses are in DC. There’s a simple and nearby way to resolve the tensions between the overzealous policeman and his aggrieved victims:
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