Toobin: Police needed beating tape

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A man who videotaped Inglewood, California police roughing up an African-American teenager was taken into custody Thursday afternoon by plainclothes officers who drove him away as he screamed, "Help! Help! Help!"

Mitchell Crooks was arrested on an outstanding warrant for petty theft with a prior conviction, driving under the influence and hit-and-run in Placer County, in northern California.

CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin was interviewed about the story by CNN Anchor Connie Chung.

TOOBIN: Let's step back for a second, Connie, and look where this -- where this story is. A week ago, just about, a white cop slammed a black kid into a car outside Los Angeles, and today there's only one person in jail. Who's that? It's the guy who took the video.

Now, that's peculiar. You can sort of understand maybe each step along the way, but it would seem to me that maybe a little bit less sort of a macho act from the L.A. District Attorney's Office and little bit more, perhaps, gentle persuasion to simply get the tape. That's all they really need from Mr. Crooks.

He is not really an important witness except to get the tape. So instead we have this big confrontation, we have Crooks thrown in jail.

CHUNG: Jeffrey, according to Crooks' friend, a guy named Dan, he says that videotape is now in the hands of the prosecutors. So, they have what they want. It is the original tape.

TOOBIN: Well, if so, that's a good thing and that's what they wanted. But you have to remember, they also paid a price for this. This is a -- this event does not occur in a vacuum. The relationship between the black people of Los Angeles and the police of that area is a very fraught, long history.

And now we have a situation where, you know, there was -- the guy who took the tape was thrown in jail before anyone else in this case. It would seem to me perhaps a little bit of gentle persuasion -- you didn't even have to have a grand jury subpoena.

All you had to do was ask Crooks to hand over the tape, and perhaps that would have been the way to do it. Instead there was a major confrontation and that's -- the D.A. will pay a price for it, maybe not that big a price, but he will pay a price.

CHUNG: All right. The lawyer for Officer Morse says that the teenager grabbed his client in the crotch area, and my question to you is, does that appear to you as being a legitimate defense for slamming him, I mean punching him, at that point?

TOOBIN: You know, Connie, when we talked about this case last week, what I said to you was, "Boy, these things, they look simple at first, but then they tend to get pretty complicated."

Well, it's getting complicated, and now we have an explanation from Officer Morse's lawyer of why he did what he did. Is it true? Is it legitimate? I have no idea. I wasn't there. I'm -- all I saw was the videotape. But, you know, this is the beginning of the investigation. Just from looking at the tape, you can see there's several witnesses there. They'll all be asked for their version of facts. If, in fact, the young man did grab the officer in the crotch, presumably someone of the other people there saw it, or if the other people there didn't see it, well, that's bad news for Officer Morse.