Cop Raid on YouTube Used In Corruption Hearing

We're relieved to see we're not the only ones getting news from YouTube. The Post follows up on the above "NYPD Corruption at its best" video of cops raiding the bar Beer Goggles on Staten Island, in which one of the officers appears to some viewers to take bills out of a video poker game and hand them around to other members of the raiding party. The clip was used as defense evidence in Sgt. William Lewis' departmental trial, in which he was accused of tipping the bar owner to the raid; Lewis' lawyers claim the tape shows that if the owner knew the identities of the raiders, he may have gotten them from the tape rather than from Lewis. Judgment is pending, and there's no telling whether any of the cash remained with the officers instead of being vouchered, but the tape looks bad to uninformed viewers, and YouTube commenters debate its import from a Rashomon perspective ("watch the video on a 55inch plus frame by frame no one steals money!"). The story is also examined at Datalounge, where posters trade unflattering reminiscences of cops ("My cousin's exwife was living with a cop. He beat the crap out of her").