To be fair...they thought they were encountering their suspect from the pursuit that had just caused this crash. They have to assume that since he was fleeing from them he is armed and dangerous until proven otherwise, on fire or not. That was the initial kick, which the guy was fumbling around so I could see where they'd have to assume he might be going for a weapon. After that though...kicking/stomping him when he was already down, I feel, was probably excessive force though...even in that situation, unless he had a gun in his hand. The only thing I could think of is maybe they were trying to stomp out some lingering flames or keep him on the ground so it would go out. But I dunno...from that angle it kinda looks like they were just pissed about the chase and wanted to "apprehend" him as roughly as possible.

The really spectacularly shitty part about the whole ordeal though is that they don't think this was even the suspect. It was an innocent bystander involved in the wreck. So the poor guy gets blindsided by this dude running from the cops at a high rate of speed, survives the crash but is on fire, crawls out of the wreckage, still on fire and no idea what is going on, trying to get his burning clothing off of him and is probably super glad to see police there to help him...and one of them promptly kicks him in the face.

If that's the case then I hope the dude gets a huge settlement from the city. I know cops have a tough job and when adrenaline is running high you have to make split second decisions that are easy to criticize in hindsight, but damn...this poor dude. Hope he survives and that it works out for him in the end.