American police officers are cowards and criminals, part 12

A McDonald's restaurant calls the police because one client of theirs has been in the bathroom for over an hour. (The story doesn't tell what the actual concern of the restaurant workers was, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that they were concerned about the guy's health, in other words, they were worried that he might have suffered some kind of medical episode and was in need of help, and thus they called 911.)

The cops arrive and order the guy to exit the bathroom and the restaurant. He does so.

Now, because American cops have an insatiable ID fetish, they absolutely demand the guy to ID himself even though he had not committed any crime, nor did they suspect him of any crime. They just wanted to ID him.

It was clear that something unusual was going on because the man is confused, has difficulties understanding what he's being told, doesn't seem to remember even basic things, and is visibly in a confused and dazzled state. At points he doesn't even remember his own birth date, at points he is throwing cursewords, and his behavior is very erratic. It's quite clear that he is having some kind of problem or medical episode. But he is quite clearly not being violent, only confused and clearly doesn't fully understand what's going on.

The correct proper thing that the cops should be doing at this moment is to call an ambulance so that the man can be assessed by qualified medical personnel. If he is having a medical episode, he should be taken to a hospital.

But of course they don't do that. Instead, they demand his ID, and when he doesn't comply to that demand in a way that satisfies the cops, what do they do?

They assault him. They beat him to a pulp. Dozens of punches. They throw him onto the ground and just keep assaulting him.

They beat him up so badly that he ends up being hospitalized. Shortly after arriving to the hospital, the man dies.

At the time of writing this it has yet not been determined whether he died because of being assaulted by the cops, who caused severe injury, but it's quite certain that they at a minimum contributed to it.

So yes, in the United States, it can happen that if you don't ID yourself to cops in a way that satisfies them, you may end up being murdered by them.

A video about the incident.