I was standing 5 to 10 meters away eating chicken wings from the tray throughout the incident. What I saw shocked me. Now, I realize that this is my view of what happened, but I wasn't personally involved nor did I personally know anyone involved.
People were commenting all night about how the police were stalking around looking like they wanted a fight. This was before the incident. The gentlemen involved did not once make what I would have considered an aggressive move/threat/verbal exchange. Now I wasn't close enough to hear every word. But once that guy was tasered, it was surreal. It looked to me like it was completely unprovoked. From what I observed, those who were cuffed/harrassed/physically harmed were harmlessly asking what the problem was or trying to plead a case for a friend in a completely non aggressive manner. After Nick was cuffed and they were cleaning up the tazered guy, everyone who witnessed it was so bewildered and offended by the excessive and unprovoked use of force that they were taking pictures, asking the officers for their names, and one guy by me was even video taping. Unfortunately I don't think he started until after the guy was tazed. The cops were throwing threats around to everyone even watching, harrassing the guy with the video camera. Yeah, it was their job to control the situation and an increasingly hostile crowd. But it was a situation that they alone escalated. What was so shocking about the tazing was that it looked to me like the guy didn't even step toward the cop. He stood up after being slammed into the wall with his hands in the air asking what he did wrong and if he did move forward it was negligable from my angle.
Did those guys do something stupid by going into he bathroom? Yes. Could they maybe have groveled before these cops looking to pick a fight a little more? Possibly. And I only say possibly because their body language looked unaggressive, I didn't hear every word of the verbal exchange. But it all could have been avoided if they had afforded these guys some common human decency and asked them to leave.
It is their job to uphold the law and diffuse potential conflict. These categorically incompetent cops only escalated it and made the problem worse. I've left my e-mail if anyone needs to contact me for a witness account as I would be previledged and honored to ruin these guys careers in any way I could. And I'll drop that other guy a line if that request is indeed legit.