When the news becomes old in Baltimore

Baltimore City - not to mention the Internet - is abuzz this week over video footage of a police officer reprimanding a skateboarder, which ended up on YouTube. The video has divided all those who see it, from the “Way to go! Kids shouldn’t talk back,” crowd to those who think his brutality and reactions were way out of line, especially when dealing with a 14-year old.

What has emerged as a secondary issue from the incident is the posting of the video on YouTube. The confrontation occurred sometime last summer but has only recently become public via the popular video-sharing service. In the span of that half year, the parents of the teenager in question never pressed charges, the police officer continued to do his job, and nobody seemed harmed by the situation.

Now that it’s a public spectacle, however, the officer has been suspended from duty and there’s been fruitless scrambling in the media to locate the person who shot the video.

Whether or not you believe the actions in the video are right or wrong, this begs the question - how much sway does the Internet have over the way society, justice and government conduct themselves? We’ve seen countless examples of how people react when they are forced - by the media or public response, often due to the circulation of information on the Internet - to respond in a way that they surely wouldn’t have prior. Rumors are started, videos are disseminated, and suddenly Barrack Obama has to remind everyone that he’s not a Muslim terrorist whilst Tom Cruise scrambles to cover up an embarrassing Scientology rant that happened sometime in the last decade. Sound familiar?

If this latest incident isn’t a perfect example of another “If a tree falls in the forest…” scenario, what is?

The glut of content on the Internet is to blame, if one can even use that word, for this neo-news broadcasting. The Internet isn’t going away anytime soon, so the effect has been one that must be reactionary and managed - just like the Baltimore P.D.’s reaction to this video this week.

View the video for yourself and see how it affects you: Baltimore Cops vs. Skateboarder