Kudos to my former co-blogger John Sexton over at Breitbart for flagging this senseless act of violence yesterday morning by an occupy protester in Los Angeles. The protester was caught on tape whacking a female police officer on the back of her head with a drum (video embedded below), and now he’s going to pay the price for his stupidity.

Early Wednesday morning Breitbart News posted a video of an Occupy protester in LA smashing a drum into the head of a female LAPD officer. At the time the video had fewer than 25 views. Within hours the video began to spread around the web on blogs and social media sites. Just over 24 hours later it has been viewed more than 200,000 times.

Yesterday afternoon, KTLA reported that a suspect in the attack had been detained and was being questioned. This morning, the LAPD announced the arrest of Brian Mendoza age 23. Sources say Mendoza is “6 feet tall and weighs 280 pounds.” By contrast, the officer he attacked is said to be 5’1″ and just over 100 pounds.

This isn’t the first time new media has played a role in highlighting threats and acts of violence on the part of occupy protesters which would have otherwise gone unnoticed…and punished. It’s encouraging to see interest on the part of the local media at least to cover a story like this, even if I don’t expect MSNBC to ever give much air time to the darker side of the occupy movement.

Ultimately I think the occupiers are going to have an uphill battle maintaining whatever level of public support they still have, thanks primarily to the efforts of the conservative new media. While only a small number of occupiers may actually commit acts of violence, incidents like these occur with frightening regularity, and they aren’t just isolated to one or two locales either. While no movement should be judged entirely on the basis of its worst elements, these acts are to be expected from a movement whose core membership includes large numbers of anarchists, communists, and other radical leftists agitating against the police. I’m pretty certain most of the 99% they claim to represent are as disgusted by this as we are, and any after-the-fact condemnation by other occupy participants rings hollow with this sort of thing happening over and over again.