Yeah, it definitely can. I've lived in Europe all my life, and traveled over Europe since I was kid, and I've seen mainland European police openly abusing people on the street. I've seen cops randomly firing their firearms in the air as 'crowd control' (the crowd in question was three old women trying to get on a boat, this was in Greece), policing openly punching someone in the face for some remark they didn't like (again, Greece), police demanding a person's passport papers at a port and refusing to return them until UK police got involved (France), and so on.

The only countries where I've never seen any open abuse by police so far have been Britain and Germany, and I haven't spent a lot of time in Germany.

EDIT: Actually, there has recently been a famous case in Britain where a police officer shoved a citizen to the floor and the citizen died of internal injuries [0]. I didn't actually witness the abuse, but it proves that even the UK isn't immune.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ian_Tomlinson

Oh, it happens. In Germany as well: http://www.dw.de/preventing-police-brutality-in-germany/a-16...

But my impression is that it's rather less common than in the USA and the courts, prosecution and conservative public don't side with the police as much.

To be fair, as an Italian living in Spain, there have been cases in recent years where "cops beat up citizens" in both countries, mostly occurring during large rallies.

Still, these occurrences are isolated cases, receive large media attention and are definitely not considered "the norm".

Don't take my comment out of context: the video refers to the context of an interrogation, questioning, stop by the police. Not a riot. The policeman follows the presentation by the lawyer regarding the 5th amendment, where it applies, and how it used, where do Miranda warning apply, etc., in line with HN link conversation. This is not a topic of riots - which is quite a different story to the OP.

> Last time I check such abuse can't be seen anywhere in Europe.

That sounds like wishful thinking. Where exactly did you check?

The video refers to the context of an interrogation, questioning, stop by the police. There seems to be a constant theme in the US regarding police abuse (and I'm not talking about a scenario of a riot, etc.) during these moments – that is what I refer to when I say "Last time I check such abuse can't be seen anywhere in Europe." Are there going to be cases of such police brutality? Sure. Is it as frequent as the cases in the US, absolutely not. Do take a look at the NPMSRP reports and compare that to any EU country.