A video has been released showing the police in Edina, Minnesota being brutally, brutally gentle to a drunken black man who was walking in the middle of a busy street.

The incident started when Larnie B. Thomas was seen by an undercover policeman walking in the middle of a crowded road.  Apparently, the police asked Thomas to walk on the sidewalk, but the man did not respond.  Then the policeman got out and approached him.  Thomas started to yell and curse the policeman. At that point, a concerned bystander started filming the incident.  The officer grabbed Thomas firmly by his jacket, and Thomas started to yell and curse even more.

The woman recording the incident kept pleading to the policeman, "Don't you see how scared he is?" in between the times when the man was cursing the policeman.  "Why don't you simply instruct him where to walk?" the woman recording the incident asked.  But the policeman, incredibly, refused to follow the bystander's orders, even though she felt she had moral authority.

The episode continued until the man, still cursing, took off his jacket and shirt.  "He's cold; why don't you let him put on his jacket?" said the woman, in reference to the man who had just taken off his clothes.

Then a second policeman arrived and handcuffed Thomas.  He still was not harmed in any way.

The woman filming continued to whine:

"He's scared. He's scared," Rowles calls out. "People die in these situations. It's scary."

Yet, somehow, Thomas managed to survive the gentle grip on his shoulder and was released shortly after and the charges were dropped, despite his disorderly conduct and despite the results of a breathalyzer test confirming that he could have singlehandedly powered a Prius with his breath alone.  Meanwhile:

... the Minneapolis NAACP chapter has called for an independent investigation of the incident, calling it "painful and humiliating."

I would call the reaction of the Minneapolis NAACP "painful and humiliating" for defending an aggressive drunk like this (and not least because of their continued use of the highly offensive term "colored people").

So this is "racism" in 21st-century America.  The media is so hard pressed to find examples of racism that a video of the police gently taking a drunk black man off the road, and enduring his yelling and profanities without response, is called racism on the part of the police.

I think there is a problem, but it is not with the police; it is with liberals who believe that it is okay to abuse our police and not expect any response.  This doesn't happen to most white people because most white people, and also many black people, are respectful of the police.  It's hard to have sympathy for the so-called "Black Lives Matter" movement when videos such as these are cited as examples of police brutality.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.