I'm sure cops have abused their authority in the past. This particular dude is clearly not one of those folks who was being cooperative.
One of the rules of society is you don't fight with cops. If they want to arrest you, and you believe you're innocent, the time to fight it is NOT when they're trying to put handcuffs on. That's plain stupid.
If "abusing their authority in the past" includes physical abuse that still goes on today, then I agree.
In fact, except for you introducing the the word "fighting" when talking about this guy dying, I agree with your whole post.
In the guy's defense, though, he'd been previously arrested 31 times*, all for non-violent offenses, so he was probably at the end of his rope, emotionally.
You can sympathize, can't you? I mean, as pissy as you get here on this board, BB, I'd bet you aren't beyond acting similarly. (You probably ARE smart enough to back off and shut up when you see that arresting you and not just hassling you is the intent of the cops, though.)
*31 times arrested probably means at least a couple of times that number hassled but not arrested. Not helped at all by the big dead guy's memorable appearance, I'm thinking; Like Naimond with his distinctive hair in The Wire, some guys are liable to draw more attention than others just because they look different/memorable.