Tucson Police Chief Roberto A. Villaseñor has broken his department's general silence (other than some brief non-committal PR comments) about accusations of brutality Saturday night and issued an extensive statement regarding the viral video of an officer shoving woman during the "unlawful assembly" at Park Ave. and University Blvd.

Here is an excerpt from Tucson Police Department Facebook page:

While I understand the level of emotion concerning videos that have been circulating from March 29, I would like to implore members of the community to allow us the time to thoroughly investigate the incident. I am not making any excuses; however, I am duty bound to weigh all of the evidence in this situation, which necessarily involves consideration of differing perspectives, statements and viewpoints. This is not the type of situation where judgment may be made lightly or without knowing all the facts. If our conduct was wrong, we will hold ourselves accountable.

These are difficult situations that often put law enforcement in a no-win situation. On the night of Thursday, March 27, the Sweet 16, we did not deploy additional resources in the area, and we had to draw resources from across the city to deal with the hundreds of people that took over University Blvd. Even though we had never experienced that type of crowd reaction so early in the tournament, there were some questions as to why we were not ready and deployed. So for the Elite 8 on Saturday, we did deploy additional resources based upon what happened two nights earlier and are now questioned as to whether our presence was the cause for the disturbance.

It is important to acknowledge that there were numerous people present on Saturday night who came out expressly for the purpose of causing a disturbance. Social media sources of comments posted before and during the event prove that. The fact that there were no serious injuries and only one bent street sign demonstrates that our presence helped maintain control.

We are not an organization that shies away from being self-critical and holding ourselves accountable. It is easy to paint with a broad brush in situations such as this, but again I am asking the public for a little patience while we take the time to conduct a thorough investigation and arrive at fact supported conclusion.

Is this enough? Is the public's memory long enough to care by the the time the investigation is concluded? Has the court of public opinion and YouTube comments already spoken on whether the cop's actions were justified or not?