A rather brilliant lawyer who specializes in defending cops put it thusly:

“One day it could be Megan Fox. The next day it’s G20.’’

He was referring to the stuff that bored police officers watch on their computer screens whilst on the job.

Which is how it came to pass that Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani was charged by the Special Investigations Unit on Tuesday with assault with a weapon, for his alleged overzealous takedown of G20 protester Adam Nobody last June 26.

Andalib-Goortani is a traffic cop out of 31 Division.

As it happens, according to sources, a front desk officer at that station was looking at video footage of police clashes with demonstrators from that awful weekend in Toronto.

It’s unclear if this was the footage shot by videographer John Bridge and posted on YouTube, which was first made public by the SIU about a month ago, or if it was a second corroborating piece of footage obtained by the Star and publicized a week later. But this event occurred within the past fortnight.

“Hey, take a look at this,’’ the officer said to his sergeant, who was then passing by, turning the monitor so the latter could take a better gander.

“Oh, that’s Babak,’’ the sergeant noted of the face on the screen.

That brief exchange somehow made its way to the SIU offices. The sergeant was summoned for an interview, the Star has learned, and confirmed the identity of the cop with the goatee, face shield lifted to expose his face.

“They never played the tape again for him,’’ says an individual who was in the room for that episode. “I think that’s unfair if this is what they based their identification on. As far as I can remember, the sergeant wasn’t asked if he recognized any of the other officers involved. And, in fairness to him, what was Andalib-Goortani shown actually doing on the tape? What I saw were jabbing motions. But was he actually striking Mr. Nobody?

“I mean, this was not the equivalent of Rodney King where a bunch of cops were obviously beating someone up.’’

Babak Andalib-Goortani arrived at the SIU’s Mississauga headquarters on Wednesday in the company of his lawyer to hear the charge against him, a session that lasted just 20 minutes. As first a subject officer and now a criminally charged officer, he has the constitutional right to decline an interview with SIU investigators — and his own police chief.

A person familiar with the case claims the SIU rushed to charge Andalib-Goortani before identifying other suspects, which hardly seems credible given that the both videotapes have been in the public realm since Dec. 7.

“I believe time was running out,’’ the source said.

By law, charges must be laid within six months in order to proceed by direct indictment. That means no preliminary hearing, where the gist of the evidence can be heard before trial. It also allows for a judge-alone trial, rather than a jury. And Canadian juries are notorious for acquitting cops.

As is also customary with officers who’ve been charged, however, Andalib-Goortani was not arrested in the fashion routine for civilians. He wasn’t taken into custody and cuffed; he wasn’t immediately remanded in court (his first appearance date isn’t till Jan. 24); and he wasn’t subjected to the “perp walk’’ where an accused is often allowed to be photographed by the media — although the Star did catch Andalib-Goortani arriving and leaving the SIU offices, an appointment that hadn’t been revealed to enquiring journalists. We learned of it from other sources.

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Cops are nearly always treated differently, more respectfully, more gingerly, which is in itself cause for dismay in a society of purported equals. More distressing, though, is the fact that only one officer from among the scores who mistreated civilians during the G20 weekend has been charged. I suspect — hell, I know — that the threshold to support an assault charge would not be nearly so high for those of us who don’t carry a badge.

Not that badges and I.D. numbers were worn by all uniformed officers on that weekend, of course. That speaks not only to premeditation — steps taken to avoid being identified — but also to complicity.

Chief Bill Blair has stated 99 officers will be docked a day’s play for removing their IDs, a quite limp discipline for breaching protocol. In fact, police association president Mike McCormack told the Star Wednesday that the 99 officers are only now beginning to be notified. They will be given the opportunity to respond before penalties are doled out and are entitled to a hearing.

The Star has learned that a deal with the union may be in the works, whereby all the officers receive less than one day’s docked pay in exchange for all of them declining to fight the Police Act charges. This would eliminate the time-consuming procedure of 99 individual hearings.

Either way, it will still come down to a mere slap on the wrist for officers who brazenly thumbed their noses at their chief. It was Blair who insisted, a few years back, that all cops wear both badge numbers and name tags on their uniforms.

No cop other than Andalib-Goortani has been identified as an assault suspect from the slew of videotape and still images received by the SIU. Out of 15 officers who may have caused injury to Nobody in the pile-on — and he claims a second beating later, behind a police van, by plainclothes officers — a dozen (identified by the SIU but their names not publicly revealed) were designated witness officers, meaning they had to submit to SIU interviews.

Yet, amazingly, none could identify either themselves or other officers from the evidence, SIU director Ian Scott said. These must be among the most unobservant cops on the planet.

Three subject officers — Andalib-Goortani and the aforementioned plainclothes duo — have refused interviews.

So Andalib-Goortani, fairly or not, stands alone. But some of the best legal minds in Toronto make a damn good living defending indicted cops on the police union dime.

No doubt Andalib-Goortani will be lawyered up good.

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