Three weeks on the force and already stripped of his badge and gun. Even worse than the crime, the apparent cover-up:

What the video doesn’t show is Pogan arresting Long for attempted assault in the third degree, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct – charges that kept the Bloomfield, N.J. man behind bars for 26 hours before his release late Saturday…

In court papers, Pogan accused Long of purposely swerving his bicycle to block traffic and then using it as a weapon to run down the officer, knocking him off his feet and causing a “laceration” on his forearm.

Watch the clip to see who ran down whom; linebackers get paid good money to make open-field tackles as crunching as this. The only semi-exculpatory explanation I can think of would be if there was a run-in earlier with the same bicyclist such that the cops had reason to believe he was dangerous and needed to apprehend him by any means necessary. I’m skeptical, but we’ll see. Exit quotation: “If it wasn’t caught on video people would not have believed it.”