How hard is it to say he resisted? Not too hard.

Pele Smith is suing the Lorain, Ohio, police. It was a he said/she said case until the release of the video.

The arrest took place while police were investigating drug complaints in Smith’s neighborhood.

According to a statement released by Lorain Police Chief Cel Rivera on Wednesday, Smith tried to destroy drug evidence by placing it in his mouth and “physically resisted officers” as they tried to retrieve the evidence.

However, the video merely shows Smith calling out to his mother to look after his son.

Smith was ultimately charged with tampering with evidence, obstructing official business, and resisting arrest. As part of a deal with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty and received probation.

Smith pleaded guilty, so we’re left with that, excuses notwithstanding. But as noted in the video, no one flinched when his face smashed the glass. The explanation for what happened is unsatisfying.

Lorain Police Chief Cel Rivera released a statement Wednesday calling Smith “a violent drug trafficker” and said the video “does not tell the complete story” and “could be misunderstood” by the public.

According to the Lorain County Clerk of Courts website, Smith has no felony convictions for violent crimes such as assault or robbery. He has prior convictions for drug offenses and possessing a firearm.

“During the arrest and Mr. Smith’s active resistance, he was placed on the hood of the police unit to gain control and conduct a search, as per policy,” Rivera said in his statement. “I would caution observers to not rush to judgment relative to the actions of the police on scene.

Nothing explains why his face met the windshield. Some won’t be particularly sympathetic toward Smith, because that’s just how they roll. Commit a crime, get your face smashed into a windshield for no particular reason. Or shot, Or beaten. If you don’t want to have your face smashed into a windshield, well, you’ve heard the argument before.

Smith wasn’t shot. Smith didn’t die. Given that we’re fed a steady diet of dead guys these days, what’s the big deal with a guy whose only problem is that a cop smashed him into a windshield? Aren’t there far worse injustices in need of exposure?

Well, sure. Of course there are. But what makes this video worth your time is the banality of the police conduct.  We obsess over extremes, like Laquan McDonald being gunned down in the street like a dog, which ultimately amount to nothing more than a settlement with his family and a promise to train cops not to murder people for shits and giggles, despite the few days of protest and crying, before moving on to the next travesty.  But we can’t be bothered getting upset over the pedestrian face plant on the windshield.

The dead black guys problem is bad, but for many, remains the outlier. It’s not like they’re killing 100 a day, right?  Of course, that it happens at all, and happens as it does, is reason enough to scream about it, but as long as it’s not your kid, you can tsk a bit and still sleep well at night.

But what about the routine, daily, ordinary, common, boring violence that doesn’t make the front page of the newspaper, doesn’t evoke an outraged protest march, doesn’t hit the big time.

The title of Amy Bach’s Ordinary Injustice keeps coming to mind. Tens of thousands of people suffer harm for no good reason. The system chews them up and spits them out, but their stories aren’t awful enough to register outrage. We never hear about them, so we don’t think about them. And even if we did, they aren’t horrible enough to muster much concern.

Whether Pele Smith should have pleaded guilty is no longer in issue. He did, and that’s that, for better or worse. But even if he was guilty as sin, there was no reason for his face to be smashed into the windshield. Lorain Police Chief Cel Rivera didn’t lose any sleep over it. The cop who did it, Zachary Ferenec, didn’t lose sleep over it. You won’t lose sleep over it either.

But there’s a video of it, finally released, and it serves to remind us that this is what happens that nobody gives a damn about. Just another ordinary day for everybody but Pele Smith.

What are the chances there is a consultant available to train police officers not to smash people’s faces into windshields? After all, how would they possibly know not to do that without special training?