When will it end?

When will the senseless attacks by police on people unable to defend themselves finally stop?

And when will accounts of what happened match the events as they unfolded, without adding details seemingly disproven by video?

For reference, what we’re discussing happened on April 15. Two Pittsburgh Police officers were patrolling along Forest Way in the east side neighborhood Homewood and saw two people sitting behind an abandoned building.

Once police passed by in their patrol car, one of the people hid an object they were holding and the other dropped it onto the ground.

Now, one of the officers said the fallen object sounded like glass hitting concrete, and the other person ran away, eventually dropping what they were hiding — a glass crack pipe.

A chase ensued, the person who did not run was detained and later arrested, and the person who ran away eventually got caught and arrested as well.

Pittsburgh police contend that the person who ran away kept resisting arrest by scratching the arresting officer, pulling her arms away and moving her body to avoid being handcuffed. This person was then handcuffed and continued to resist arrest by not walking, continuing to scratch the arresting officer and purportedly biting him.

In response to what may or may not have happened, the arresting officer punches this handcuffed person in the face with a closed fist so hard that their head snaps back.

Here’s the problem: what is stated in this report does not match a video showing the entire arrest. The person who was allegedly resisting the entire time has their hands visible throughout the entire video, so one should easily be able to see her scratching the officer if it happened, right?

But anyone who views the video will not see that. Instead, they will see her hands moving as much as they could while handcuffed, but her hands did not go near the officer who punched her. Even if the video was low quality –– and it isn’t — someone scratching another person would be obvious.

The response to someone not standing still and moving their hands a lot while not causing any injuries or major struggles for arresting officers is shocking, abhorrent and uncalled for. Those in the know with law enforcement can say with confidence that this was not best practice or justified in any way. She was defenseless.

Videos exist of people resisting arrest in much worse, violent fashion that are not punched or even pushed. In the situation of someone refusing to stand up, officers will typically just pick the person up and carry them into a patrol car. This person was arrested by two men — the default response not being to just pick her up shows this situation was not handled correctly at all.

And of course, some people are going to say that the person punched somehow deserved it because they had drug paraphernalia on them. We categorically disagree.

For one, it’s not yet known if these people were confirmed to be “doing drugs” behind the building. And even if they were, that’s still not a good enough reason to punch someone as if they were in the middle of committing an aggravated assault.

The property owner of the abandoned building they were behind was not involved, and the two were not on the property at any point. This entire situation should have never happened.

And before anyone misconstrues our words, we are not saying every police officer on the planet is like the one who punched someone unjustifiably. But when events like these keep happening, at what point does it take for the public to realize there’s a problem, whether the issue lies with one individual, a police zone or the whole force?

We should expect better from those walking and driving the beat who are supposed to be protecting us off campus.