I saw all of this on the Today Show this morning. This is a fun one. Of course it was Sharpton they had on talking about it. You know it's a bad sign when any criticism of the cop's action starts with "now I don't condone the actions of these girls, but...". Yeah, the cop probably went a bit far, but those girls brought it upon themselves. When you do stupid things, bad things are far more likely to happen to you. The truth of the matter is that it didn't matter what that cop did there, he was going to wind up looking bad in someone's eyes. That one punch pretty much brought everything under control though and no serious damage happened to anyone. A big thumbs up for that.
I did enjoy Sharpton looking like an idiot this morning though. He said a couple times that the cop wound back and unloaded that punch on her. Sure Al, he backed up with the sole intention of loading up a punch. Completely ignore the fact that he didn't back up on his own, but was actually pushed back.
And a couple people questioned why they're making an issue out of jaywalking. I had heard a week or two ago that they have been heavily enforcing jaywalking offenses recently in the Seattle area. That would at least explain why a cop is stopping someone for jaywalking.