The violent video shows two men beating a third man unconscious using bolt cutters. LAPD detectives published the video on the police department's official channel, hoping the public could identify the attackers, but the video allegedly violated YouTube’s terms of service.
Perhaps thanks to public pushback, YouTube reinstated the LAPD account after first denying an appeal to drop the suspension and republish the video.
Bill D'Agostino of the Media Research Center says YouTube is notorious for being inconsistent in enforcing its rules.
“They apply those terms very unevenly based on, very frequently, the political leanings or their political feelings about who they're enforcing these rules on,” he tells AFN.
In the video, the two attackers are black and their victim, who needed emergency brain surgery, is white.
Other LAPD videos posted to its YouTube channel and viewed by AFN show violent officer-involved shootings as well as fatal hit-and-run incidents.
D'Agostino points out that there are plenty of other, more violent content that is not flagged. The selective enforcement, he insists, is intentional.
“The goal in writing overly broad, very vaguely phrased rules like this is to give themselves that kind of power,” the media analyst insists.
There is little doubt the unseen YouTube employees and their bosses lean left politically, which means their view the black attackers as victims and the LAPD as the real perpetrators.
