Is that true? The story doesn't say that. He was standing out of the way and holding a sign, legally. How that does amount to impeding the officers? How often does seeing a random protestor on the street make you suddenly belligerent with officers, and what evidence did you read that makes you think that happened here? It seems like you're making big assumptions.
If he's impeding police, what is YouTube doing with its thousands of checkpoint videos?
> I'm not saying what they did was OK.
Good? Because it was illegal what they did. Against the law. It was not only not OK, it was bad and wrong. Doubly so because the protestor was being peaceful and legal, and also because the police are charged with representing the law and upholding it's values, and they have a responsibility to not seize property, to not escalate a situation to violence, and to tell the truth about what happened.
It's a shame if this is easy to understand and commonplace, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than this.