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Students Put UCLA Taser Video On YouTube
dircha writes "As widely reported, an incident in which Iranian-American student Mostafa Tabatabainejad was tasered up to five times by UCLA police on Friday, has been captured by a fellow student using a video enabled cell phone and published to YouTube. From the Daily Bruin: 'At around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, Tabatabainejad, a fourth-year Middle Eastern and North African studies and philosophy student, was asked to leave the library for failing to present his BruinCard during a random check. The 23-year-old student was hit with a Taser five times when he did not leave quickly and cooperatively upon being asked to do so.' In a story which has raised concerns of racial profiling, police brutality and the health risks of taser use, the ubiquity of video cell phone technology has given us a first hand record of an incident which might otherwise have been a he-said, she-said affair. While the publishing of the video to YouTube has given the issue compelling popular exposure beyond the immediate campus community."
The kid got what he wanted - attention. Now he's complaining? What exactly did he expect would happen for being such an ass? Now that he's had his 15 minutes of fame, I think we can move on to other more newsworthy things. And I hope this idiot loses his inevitable lawsuit. What does it say about our country when any moron can become rich just by being a jackass?
He shouldn't have gotten shocked repeatedly, but he could have just stood up. After you get shocked with a taser, you have the ability to get up and walk after a relatively short amount of time (about 15-20 seconds from what I've seen on Cops and Jackass :). That's with the heavy duty tasers that major police departments use. The video doesn't show what type of taser they're using, but it could be one of the medium duty ones (think one step up from the ones used on Tory from Mythbusters in the plant experiment). Either way, he would definitely be able to get up and walk before they were able to tase him again.
He would also be in the proper mental state to understand what they're talking about. Other than being really pissed off, that is. Your mind recovers from the shock far faster than your muscle would. He'd be fully cognizant around the time he stopped screaming. Anyone who has gotten a decent shock before would agree with this. I got shocked by an industrial laser with a short in the metal casing and knew what was going on a second later, while my arm hurt like hell for a little while longer.
All he needed to do was show his ID or leave the building when asked and this would have been avoided. He's an idiot for not doing one or the other. On the other hand, the cops are idiots for not just handcuffing him and carrying him out. It's a lot more work when someone is uncooperative, but it's the right thing to do. If he had struggled while they handcuffed him and carried him, then they would have had the right to tase him.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Are you serious? Students start attacking an officer and those officers are DAMN well within their rights to start tazing left and right. It's all about managing threat to the officers and protecting their own wellbeing.
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If you could stand up after being Tased they wouldn't be using them in the first place.
Quit making shit up, you can stand up just fine within seconds of being tasered. It's not a fucking bat in the face, it doesn't knock you out. As soon as it's done, it's done, and you say "god damn that sucked" and get up. (or just lay there and wait for another one, to pump up your lawsuit)
I've never been tazed, but from what I have seen in videos where people are tazed for training purposes, you regain almost full control within a few seconds of the tazer turning off. I do feel that it would have been more appropriate for the UCPD to carry/drag him out than taze him, but I also feel that his utter defiance of their repeated command for him to leave the building makes him at least equally to blame for the incident.
What we see on this video is a reflection of what is going on in the american society. Patriot act is a good hit. Constitution rights, war, Bush... Tension tends to break here and there, like the way tectonic plates relief pressure. So, we have a society that is frightened by terrorists, its own chosen government, and thinks that every other country hates it (vastly true). There is/will be more of this happening, trust me. Fear causes cruelty. I personally am amazed that this brutal display of power did not cause the "officers" to be beaten by the crowd. They were really close though... I am standing here more than 12000 km away and am furious about what has happened to a fellow person, what about the bystanders?
The fact that the kid was quite vocal through the whole thing makes me think it was the lesser of the two, since if he had been hit with the bigger one you wouldn't have heard much out of him and the whole thing would have been over after the first taser hit. You said this yourself when describing your little story.
So telling him "get up or you'll get the taser again" is absolutely appropriate as the kid was still able to do so. There's alot of whining about police prutality, well we could always go back to the good ol' days when the first thing the police officer would go for his mapple baton and beat the man till he had broken bones.
The man had every opportunity to avoid the whole thing.
The library staff asked him to leave if he didn't have a student card
He stayed
The police asked him to leave
He stayed and instead began mouthing off to them
The police tried to physically remove him out of the building
He resisted
The police now attemtp to arrest him and now begin tasering him.
At this point it doesn't matter whether or not he could comply with them.
He had pushed the situation past the point of what reasonable a reasonable person would have done.
He was offered many opportunities to avoid the whole thing.
To bad He didn't take any of them.
Are you noticing a trend here
He got what he deserved. Maybe a little too much of what he deserved, but deserved none the less.
There are not capital letters big enough to say this: HE DESERVED IT 110%!! Jesus Christ, you moron, the police have asked you to leave because you don't have proper ID to be in a facility that requires you to have an ID. Let's scream and resist and fight it, instead of leaving peacefully, going and getting your ID, and coming back. After all, it was YOUR dumbass mistake to be there without proper ID in the first place! The so-called victim had ALL the power to prevent this from happening at all, and to stop it immediately after the first taser by cooperating instead of continued resistance. Then, after the first taser, how f'ing stupid do you have to be to continue to yell and resist, despite countless warnings that you are about to be tasered again? If my kid came home crying that she'd been tasered by police, and I saw a video like this of the incident, I'd say, "Well, kiddo, you definitely got what you deserved, I'm just glad you didn't get shot or beaten, and instead have only the memories of some temporary, non-scarring electric shock induced pain."