Vegas Police OK $100k For Videographer In Beating

March 28, 2012

A Las Vegas police money committee has approved a $100,000 settlement for a man who says he was attacked and beaten in his driveway as he videotaped police in his neighborhood.

The department’s Committee on Fiscal Affairs signed off Monday on the settlement with Mitchell Crooks, of Las Vegas.

Crooks was taping police as they investigated a burglary report on his cul-de-sac on March 20, 2011. Officer Derek Colling began to drive away from the scene, but stopped his vehicle, shined a light on Crooks and approached him.

Video footage captures Colling telling Crooks to put down the camera. Crooks refuses, telling the officer he’s within his legal rights to tape the incident and he’s on his own property.

The camera shakes and Crooks is heard howling while an officer is heard yelling at him to stop resisting. According to the federal civil rights lawsuit Crooks filed in November, that’s when the officer beat him.

At the end of the four-minute clip posted to YouTube, a voice is heard saying, “When you don’t do what I ask you, then you’re in a world of hurt.”

Crooks was arrested for battery against an officer, trespassing and resisting arrest. The charges were later dropped.

Colling was fired in December after a departmental investigation. In five years as a police officer, he was involved in two fatal shootings that coroner’s juries ruled were justified.

Crooks moved to Las Vegas after making headlines in 2002 when he videotaped two Inglewood, Calif., police officers beating a 16-year-old boy.

Topics Law Enforcement Oklahoma

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