Jonah Goldberg, uber-conservative on National Review Online, proudly-linked back to an article he wrote a couple of years ago in which he comes out in favor of police brutality.

Goldberg File Just as doctors often take technically illegal actions while actually making the morally correct decision, the same holds true for cops. In fact, the stakes of the hidden law for cops are far higher than for regular folks. Cops do not merely arrest people, they enforce social norms where social norms are the least entrenched and the most needed. In my dad's old neighborhood, a cop was often more likely to slap a kid around than actually press charges for something like shoplifting (my dad was a good boy and did no such thing, FYI). The slapping was surely just as illegal then as it is now, but the intent was consistent with the hidden law. Growing up in New York, I myself got some stern warnings from members of the law-enforcement community, but that's a subject for another day.

Admittedly, the instance he was writing about then involved someone who shot at cops. Sometimes it is understandable that cops would use excessive force. But it's never okay. It is not the job of the police to render punishment for crimes. That is the job of the judiciary -- and one of the reasons we value the independence of judges.
Indeed, isn't one of the hallmarks of a dictatorship that the police are allowed to mete out punishment on a whim? Sure, that may preserve order, but at a price I'm not willing to pay.
As for Goldberg's fondness for the "hidden law" and "social norms" that the police enforce through "slapping," what he's really talking about is keeping people in their place. There used to be a hidden law in the South that was enforced through extra-legal means. I don't think even the wingnuts at the National Review want to live in a world of lynchings, beatings, and the third degree.