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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."
...if after watching this video, you see what the LAPD(and by extension, the UCLA PD) are willing to do on camera, and in front of dozens of witnesses, what do they do without people watching?
And am I the only one that upon hearing, Police burtality" and "Caught of tape" are completely unsurprised the LAPD are somehow involved?
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Justice can be a pain in the ass.
This was pretty sick. If you get hit by a tazer it's pretty impossible to stand up for at least a few minutes. That's the entire point of a tazer. They could have just handcuffed him and carried him out. I hope these "officers" go to jail.
Tagged "bzzzt" for over zealous use of tasers.
Haha, those coppers sure love them tasers. Nothing like zapping a victim with 50 kilovolts of nerve incapacitating love.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
The hundreds of eyewitnesses in the video, and the fact that neither the UCPD or the University denies this incident happened?
...between him and the police at the very end where it's "time to go" is supposed to prove what, again? Context, people. Context.
one has to have some reason when applying force...you can't apply force them expect the person receiving the force to have full motor functionality afterwards. Furthermore, applying force for a non-violent offense without any obvious threat to your own safety is highly unnecessary IMHO. That said...had the guy had a visible gun I say shoot him and go home safe to your family.
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I keep hearing people complaining "if he had just listened" or "all he had to do was get up." But seriously, think about it -- should he really have been tased repeatedly or simply arrested?
1. After being shocked repeatedly, could he even have been ABLE to "just" stand up?
2. After being shocked repeatedly, would be have been in a mental state to understand the cops' commands?
3. He was on the floor. An irritating act, but something deserving electrocution?
4. What if someone asks for a warrant, should they also get electrocuted. After all "all he had to do was let them search."
Put simply, this was WRONG. The kid deserves to be arrested, NOT electrocuted. To those of you who say "tasing is non-lethal," well, i dare you to do it to yourself. Post a video on YouTube to prove it.
This is why google bought youtube... they bought it for the power of its media distribution...
Does it go on forever?
Nice to see that the introduction of street corner cameras is being matched by our ability to watch them.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
A) You don't need "beyond reasonable doubt" in a civil suit. B) There were a couple dozen witnesses on the scene, most of whom appeared angry enough to testify in court. C) You get clear views of several of the officers' faces. D) The officers' voices can probably be identified.
On a side note, it'll be interesting to see how the officers justify their refusal to give their badge numbers (which was reportedly followed up with a threat to the person who asked). It makes it appear that they knew what they did was an excessive use of force, and were trying to hide their identities. That will look EXTREMELY bad to a judge and/or jury.
Say what you want about this kid's motives or lack of discretion, but the thing that struck me while watching this was that nonviolent protest (poorly represented or not) is truly dead in America. The widespread and almost casual use of "non-lethals" in these situations clearly goes beyond their intended purpose. Well...ostensibly intended, anyway.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Four Officers... one kid come on.. They could have talked this kid into the handcuffs, while he was a jerk he wasnt exactly a threat.
Sorry the police are here to serve and protect, their actions are the actions of thugs who enjoy weilding power. So while I might not be deeply sorry for the kid, I am deeply ashamed of the actions of the law enforcement officials.
Storm
What's up with all the sheeple standing around watching? It's shameful that such a large crowd was too timid to stop the police from doing something so obviously wrong. What exactly would it take to get the crowd to intervene?
The words "surveillance society" scare a lot of people, but I would actually love to live in a surveillance society that worked the way this event worked out: the surveillance is carried out by individuals, in a public place, voluntarily, and all they're doing is recording something that they saw with their own eyeballs anyway.
Similarly, I would love to see photo red light reimplemented so that if other drivers saw you run a red light, they could slap a button on their dashboards, and the video would be posted on you-tube. Hell, we wouldn't even need a DMV anymore. Insurance companies would just hire people to watch traffic videos, and log patterns of stupid behavior by certain individuals. The insurance companies would then refuse to offer insurance to those people.
I'm a teacher, and over the past 10 years of teaching, I've had the following experiences: (1) a student gets upset and disrupts my class for 10 minutes (10 minutes is a long time); (2) a homophobic student harasses a gay student while I'm out of the room; (3) a student attacks me in the hall, throws me in some bushes, and threatens to kill me. In all three cases, I would have loved to have the whole thing recorded on you-tube, because significant disagreements arose later about what really happened. In incident #2, in fact, a room full of students were unable to identify the harasser, and it turned out that it was more of a two-way thing than the initial witnesses (the gay student's friends) had claimed. A room full of witnesses is nice, but a video is a lot nicer.
The good or bad effects of this kind of technology depend a lot on who uses the technology. It's like guns. Guns in the hands of Nazis stormtroopers: bad. Guns in the hands of individuals: good.
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Okay, I don't know exactly what happened or why it happened. Honestly I'm not gonna waste time on that, my question is however, what are the health risks associated with tazer use compared to batons, knives, pepper spray, mace, guns, and good ol'e fashion force.
I have never been shot, stabbed or maced. I have however been beaten with a cylindrical object and pepper sprayed(By accident). So I can give an opinion on those 2. All I know is that my eyes and nose were on fire and I wanted to die at that point. Of course i got an aftershock when I washed my hair in the shower... oh god.....
What makes a tazer safer than the others, what makes it more dangerous. I mean i can guarantee its better to be tazered than to be shot. Honestly i just want to know what yall think/know (Since they are the same thing here).
You mad
five hundred times you say? eh, did you pay good money to get that done? I give you "Anonymous Coward" aka The Man Formally Known As Mr. Harold Butts :/
There was 60+ students standing around. If you ever see something like this happening, and you don't help, then you are just as bad as the police were in this case.
Does this come as a shock to anyone?
There was a post before on here about the FBI investigating the LAPD for brutality. You would think that would make them calm down a little?
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
A UCLA student and a member of the crowd that witnessed this event posted his reaction on a board that I moderate, www.blogwars.com. Forgive the reference, but the tally of the first-handers who witnessed this event points toward the victim being a gigantic jackass, refusing to show his ID and not cooperating with campus police. When I was in college being asked for my student ID was never a protestable offense. In order to get into my dorm, enter the student recreation center, the campus gym, a football or basketball game, etc... we had to pony up our student IDs. If the police have to deal with an angry, shouting person who won't identify themself, show ID, or cooperate... what are they left to do?
See here and here for some inspiration.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Nonlethals have just become a substitute for good police work.
The number one test of a good officer is how well he (or she) can solve a problem without resorting to the use of force. If he can look someone in the eye, figure out what is going through that person's head, and assert the authority or voice the reasoning necessary to get compliance with a lawful request, he has done his job properly. Resorting to force to compel behavior is already a kind of failure. Of course there are some people out there who are just hell-bent on harming others - that's why the option of force exists - but clearly that's not what Tabatabainejad was about.
And resorting to force to compel behavior when the person in question is not being violent and is causing no harm to anyone, well, that's beyond failure as an officer, that's failure as a human being.
The officers who did this are a far greater threat to safety on the UCLA campus than that student would ever be. I do hope the university administration recognizes this and responds accordingly. If they do not, then we must seriously question the administration's commitment to protecting their students.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
The definition of a taser:
Delivers a high-voltage, low-amperage charge that mimics the body's electrical signals, temporarily paralyzing the target from a range of 15-20 feet.
Notice the "temporarily paraliyzing". Im starting to think America doesnt train its police enough, to realise that a taser simply is not used as a means of getting someone to do something. Insted its ment to be used to defend yourself from a target that will cause harm to you, thus paralyzing them for your own safty.There were 5 policemen and one student, i really dont think any of those police were in danger.
So if you say, well why didnt he get up, 'well he couldnt get up because it paraliyzed him'.. Infact, there is a law against using taser for that very reason shown there.
If you say, 'well what if he had a gun, or what if he was selling drugs, then maybe a taser would of been approiate'.. Well what about 'innocent before proven guilty'? They could of checked him for that but they chose to stun him anyways.
And the most rudest reply, 'he deserved what he got'. These people obviously dont understand how powerful a laser is, and i dont blame them cause there mostly dumb americans with no clue about anything. But stunning someone five times to get up is abuse. they could of easily let him walk out, or at worst tackled him, hand cuffed him and escorted him outside.
but then again your right, he did deserved what he got, and that will be a big fat cheque.
Using YouTube to disprove a false assumption based on YouTube...
We have all seen multiple videos where a guy who is tazed rolls around for a moment then gets to his feet - especially teenagers who seem to love to taze themselves for YouTube.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I really shouldn't even bother, but here goes:
First of all, how many people do you know that first of all would go through the trouble of getting tased just to get one belief out there? Second of all, how many people do you know that actually expect to get videoed just because they're shouting their beliefs in the library? Third, how many "morons" do you know that become "rich" because they saying what they felt was true so they were tased by police 5 times? Furthermore, he was tased while on the ground being told if he didn't get up he'd be tased again!
According to an article by Silja J.A. Talvi, "People who have experienced the effect of a Taser typically liken it to a debilitating, full-body seizure, complete with mental disorientation and loss of control over bodily functions."
So next time you think you're going to be wise and bitch about how people can make so much money off of such an easy thing, try it before you do it!
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Does this have any bearing on the decision to try to subdue him using force?
As a side note, it has also been largely unmentioned that the police used the most mild form of tasering, despite this man's loud screaming and profuse cursing:
Lastly, IANAL so I wanted to ask how the law works here... If a police officer grabs you, and you physically shake him off as this man did, are the police in the wrong for grabbing you in the first place? I remember reading somewhere that if you physically resist an officer, it can open a whole lot of nasty doors... Someone please let me know.
And this surprises you ... why?
I've seen cops and bar bouncers smack around people on various occasions, some of them deserving, some of them probably not, and in each case there were people standing around and watching. I've never seen anyone who wasn't directly connected in some way to the person getting the beating involve themselves unnecessarily.
Most people will happily stand back and watch Bad Things Happening To Other People Who Probably Deserve It Somehow. It's probably humanity's oldest form of entertainment.
To most of the people in that library, the whole thing was just like watching COPS, but in the ultra-ultra high definition sometimes known as Reality(TM).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Yagman said his firm has handled hundreds of cases similar to Tabatabainejad's
If it can happen to this guy - innocent of any wrongdoing but with a most spectacularly justified distrust of the dimwit powertrippers carrying the weapons - then it can happen to anyone.
All respect to the students and others present who challenged this outrageous abuse of authority, as far as they felt able. I can only hope I'd have similar courage in their place.
you had me at #!
a few points:
a) The student chose to seat himself upon the floor when the officers were trying to escort him out (per his own lawyer's account to an LA Times reporter). Near the beginning of the video you can hear the student asking the officer to take his hand off his shoulder, then the officers asking him please stand up. All before the student starts screaming (which may have been when he was tasered).
b) He was defying a standing policy of requesting proof of ID in the campus library after 11PM. It is undoubtedly in place to prevent late-night attacks, muggings, and rapes. He chose to not leave after being asked for ID multiple times and then asked to leave if he could not show ID. The reasons for this policy are very real, ignoring it could be be dangerous for students in the building late at night. Why protest enforcement of such a policy, on private grounds?
c) From the point where he voluntarily hits the ground, the police are mostly just asking him to get up. This is because they were still ina libarary, with a man who refused to show ID and refused to leave, for a period of time long enough for campus staff to hound him repeatedly before calling campus security, who then called police.
It's hard for me to speculate about whether that was wrong or out of the ordinary, since the one time I got caught in the computer lab without my pass, I just left and came back with it later. But I think he was given plenty of chances and was mostly just spoiling for an argument and bit off more than he could chew.
I don't like to make decisions on such videos without seeing the whole incident from beginning to end, but since more or less the beginning of time, if authority figures (police or otherwise) are standing over you ordering you to do something, and you lay on the floor yelling that you won't leave and other assorted obscenities and slights on their position or authority, well, that is so blindingly stupid that you are lucky if tased is all you get.
Surely everyone has seen an episode of Bad Boys and what happens when you resist arrest. Whether the authorities should have tased the guy 5 times (or more) is questionable, but the guy that got tased was asking for more of the same by refusing to cooperate with the authorities. These are the same authorities, by the way, that he and other disapproving students will count on any other time to protect them from nasty people. Rules are rules, and if you glaringly flout them, bad things happen sometimes. I think the guy should be grateful that he wasn't drug down stairs feet first, or given the King treatment.
Yes, they could have carried him out, but then again, his mouth was running too much to get any kind of compassion from the cops... that is life most times. Ever seen anyone get unruly in a bar? When that happens, bouncers are about as gentle as these cops were... or can be.
Arguing with cops or resisting arrest is worse for your health than smoking or eating sugar soaked breakfast cereal, let that be a lesson to those that think that 'believing you are right means you will always win'.
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I don't think it would look bad to a judge at all. These officers were in the middle of an altercation. The proper thing would be for them to give their badge numbers once the culprit is handcuffed in a squad car. Once people are screaming at officers they are conceivably a threat. As much as I dislike legitimate police brutality, I think police officers damn well need to have the right to act firstmost in order to protect themselves, especially when some stupid punk kid is refusing to listen to them.
----------------- Oink. Moo. rarr! -----------------
He was asked nicely to leave several times
He didn't comply
He got a taste of taser because of this and because the partialy paralyzed person is easier to arrest.
After electrocution your muscle doesn't work for some time (if you want to test -- tput your finger into electrical socket >:D ). IMHO police intentionaly didn't use the full power output as they didn't want to carry him, they wantet him to on on his own foot. But that idiot decided to make a show.
Somehow US became a country where abuse of rights with intention to go to court has became common sense. This can be clear example: asshole was take by force. Now he's complayinig about police brutality and racial opression.
And they are NOT being treated as such by police. They are "less-lethal," not non-letal.
Police at like they are the "one-all" solution to solving crime, the perp will stop.
sorry, but this is very dangerous and needs to be corrected. this should never have happened to this kid. Cops are getting lazy and lives are being lost.
Much like Kuroshin before it, the sign of the end for Digg is when they start begging slashdot's community to come over for fresher news.
Slashdot is a discussion forum. The power here is not timeliness, it's the audience.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
"He definitely taunted the UCPD into behaving the way they did with him."
O RLY?
Was Jeffrey Miller taunting Ohio National Guardsman into shooting him in the mouth?
Excessive force seems to be a popular thing with police in the United States. If this person was causing a problem, how hard would it have been to cuff this person? Have you ever been tased? Have you been tased twice? Have you been tased 5 fucking times in 5 minutes? The only thing worse is how no one seemed to care beyond the person smart enough to record it. I'd think you'd lose bowel control by the 5th time, but I've never been tasered, so I can't say.
I know what pepper spray feels like (one of the many non-lethal crown control devices), and it's not pleasant. Do you? Would you be so quick to spray someone who was merely not co-operating, or would you try to reserve that for people who posed a threat? Unless this guy was trying to fight the cops, I don't see how this was justified. Acting like a child doesn't mean you should use this level of force.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
There's no reason they had to keep shocking him when he wouldn't stand up. The taser isn't a magic want for cripes sake! You can't wave it at someone and expect them to do something - that falls under the category of torture. -threatening severe pain/violence to get a subdued arrestee to comply with demands. It may be fashionable in the USA right now to threaten detainees with torture, but that's not how democratic country's police forces are supposed to work.
Your point about there being 2 sides, may apply to the initiation of the arrest, but not in the middle where they acted with extreme brutality.
Oh You POS
The problem with that video is that we enter midway through the true story, where he is down and been tazered once already. But why are there four cops around? What exactly was he doing that made them ask him to leave in the first place? It would seem that in order to be asked to leave from a library you would have to have done more than be speaking loudly or bring in a sandwitch.
That combined with how he was screaming about the "patriot act" made me more than a little suspicious that the victim went in with the goal of mixing it up with some law enforcement people, angry at The Man to start.
That video raises more questions than it answers, about both sides of the conflict. Next time, if anyone else is in the same situation can't you stand on a chair please!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are two sides to EVERY story.
And on what side of the story is the fact that the officer tasered him while he was handcuffed? Its right before they walk out the door. The camera is shooting over a counter, and they are telling him to stand up. One officer on either side and by the angle of his arms, his hands are cuffed or restrained behind his back. Tasering him in restraints is nothing less than unjustified use of force.
I dunno. Maybe arrest him, bring him to the station, charge him with disorderly conduct, and tell him that if he causes trouble like that again, he's gonna spend a few days in jail? I know, it's a little bit "out there," but I really think this strategy could work.
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Man ... when I was in college the only thing I had to show my ID for was dinner and checking out books from the library. Wasn't even that long ago (graduated 1992). Maybe I'll sound like a foil hatter, but it seems we're training kids that they need an ID to go anywhere on campus so that in the future, they aren't too concerned when the checkpoints go up and they have show ID everytime they cross a county line.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I made the point that the cops should have just grabbed this dude. One cop, each handling an appendage, could carry him outside without incident. If bar security can do it, so can the black and blue. Lemme tel you something. I'm an iconoclast. I push boundaries by accident. But I have never been tazed by the police. This jackass could have prevented this EASILY.
Watch the video again. As they are going out the door telling him to stand up the officer tasers him. He is in handcuffs/restraints. It is not justified. Rehearsed rants or no rehearsed rants, tasering him when he is already restrained is excessive force.
Since this is very old ill just say what I said before about this. IMO this guy was just putting on a show... Trying to be anti-establishment and put on a show for everyone else. If they didn't taser him they would have had to carry him out kicking and screaming. Also tasers dont have any lasting effects... once the current stops the pain stops and your muscles relax. The mayor of our city adn the council got tasered on TV for demonstrations when they gave out the tasers to the police force here and they all laughed about it after they fell down and got back up. And someone mentioned on another board I read that the police already said they This guy was screaming like a lunatic and I truely feel like he got what he deserved. I read most of the replies and slashdot members seem to take almost the exact opposite stance that the other message board I read had. The other board all seemed to think this guy deserved it and the police did nothing wrong (other message board is a younger audience 17-20). But from all the replies here being the same I think this discussion is suffering from groupthink. This is hardly police brutality. Was the guy hurt at all? No.
As college tuition rises, the people in charge feel a responsibility to provide their students (and their parents in newsletter format) with services worthy of yearly tuition hikes. It has nothing to do with breaking people down and forcing them to toe the line, it's just like carrying a digital receipt of the knowledge you're borrowing and returning.
That is foil-hattish. We were asked for our ID's in order to get into our dorms after a certain time and night, since visitors weren't allowed unless being registered. That's not about surveillance, it's so they know who's in the building in case of a fire, alien attack, etc.
We were asked for our student ID's for sporting events so we could get our student discount for the tickets. Same thing for shows or conferences. They need some way of making sure you're a student, and an ID is the obvious method. Keep in mind they don't record your ID for these things, but I wouldn't mind if they did. What nefarious scheme could they be implementing by knowing I go to the football game?
I'd be more worried about your example of checking out books, where they could track your reading habits. The other things aren't a big deal in comparison.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
If he did show his ID card and the police still fired the taser, then he has a case against the police. However, in this case, he refused to show a card.
In my opinion, the police acted properly. As a former university student, I do not want strangers or uncooperative weirdos floating around campus.
As a police officer, I have two things to say about this:
1) This kid sounds like an ass and I'm certain that there will be more than enough "He got what he deserved posts." I might even agree in the moral sense, but not in the ethical or legal sense, because....
2) This cop should never work in law enforcement again. This is inappropriate use of force by any professional standard. One post is not nearly enough to recount the things he did incorrectly, but I'll hit the high points;
General rules for any controlled encounter (one where you aren't in danger from the get go) include finding out what the issue is, telling the subject what he/she needs to do, and explaining what will happen if they do not. There is almost never a need to place your hands on anyone for any reason until you are ready to take them into custody unless you are suddenly attacked. This "officer" is grossly incompetent. Understand we deal with aggressive people that posture by yelling and swearing at us all the time - this should not disrupt the officer on bit. Keep. Your. Cool. So, screaming/swearing or not, this encounter should have been over with three sentences from the officer.
A) "Sir, per university rules and regs, I need you to show me your valid student ID or leave the library."
B) "I need to to show me your valid student ID or leave the library right now, or I'll have to take you into custody for trespassing and disturbing the peace."
C) "Sir, I am placing you under arrest." Then Mirandize him and be done with it. If he does anything but exactly what you tell him ("Sir, place your hands behind your back.") then....
Now and only now, if he/she resists (NOT if he simply fails to cooperate i.e. passive resistence), you may use force sufficient to subdue him to the point of having him cease to be a danger to the officer or bystanders. That's pretty simple stuff, folks. Basically, never be the first to use force, but when you do - do it quickly and overwhelmingly then STOP when he's restrained. You are a trained professional who owns the situation and NOT a street brawler.
From what I can tell, he never told the subject he was under arrest until after at least five taserings, some of which occurred while he was in cuffs and all but the first while he was on the ground unable to stand under his own power. This "officer" grabbed the guy's arm while he was leaving. Bad move, even if it seems like a little thing. Physical contact constitutes use of force, and any trained officer knows this is a big line to cross. I don't care if he didn't leave immediately - in that case place him calmly in custody early on and be done with it, no argument needed. You're the cop; you NEVER need to be in an argument. You aren't asking him what he wants to do, you're telling him. Never ever let a subject think they are in control. Arguing tells the subject they have some power.
What he did is inexcusable. If this power-tripping bully didn't have a badge what would you think of somebody tasering a defenseless person on the ground FIVE TIMES some while he was handcuffed and yelling at him to "get up." A badge doesn't free you from responsibility, it adds to to it exponentially.
This sadistic SOB gives all true professional LEOs a bad name and is part of the reason so many distrust cops. I've had training on most of the common less-than-lethal systems (lawyers don't let us call them non-lethal) including tasers, stun guns, pepper spray, rubber bullets and even conducted some training on the same. Unless this guy was issued a system with no training, he knows damn well the individual won't be getting up immediately after one tasing, let alone five. Frankly, I hope this guy answers for assault charges.
To summarize, to non-cops this might appear to be a case of overreacting during a tense moment with a belligerent person. To most professionals, this is about as vanilla an arrest as there is where the cop did basically everything wrong. So wrong, in fact, I intend to use these videos as a training aid.
This was so absurd that I actually laughed when the guy threatened to to taser the bystander who asked for his name and badge number. It's almost like he was trying to get fired and sued.
If the student in question could offer one reason why he disobeyed the officers' request,... uh, wait. He can't. Sorry.
First of all, this was UCPD, not LAPD.
UCPD officers were not the ones that carded him, so profiling is not the issue. The student was originally carded by a Community Service Officer (CSO), basically a student security guard working in the library. The UCPD was called when the student refused to leave.
While the bystanders were not physically doing anything to stop the officers, they were yelling in protest and requesting the officers' ID numbers. The officers threatened to tase the students who were asking for badge numbers. (...And what do you expect? these are college students here. They hardly ever actually do anything; they just protest and make a lot of noise.)
I am a current UCLA student, and honestly I don't see why this story is so huge, especially when the officers in question will probably be punished appropriately. Again, this is UCPD, not LAPD, and so does not really affect anyone outside of campus. I think YouTube was probably the main reason this story is as big as it is.
Regardless, it is definitely abuse on the part of the officers. Enough people die from being tased just twice... five times is completely unnecessary. if they had used the taser only once, no one would have had an issue with it, especially considering how much of a jackass the student was being (judging from the video). Tasing an already-incapacitated suspect is unacceptable, though.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
I read a post above that claimed the student involved loved to make trouble. And what I saw from the video would lead me to believe that is likely true. However it shows just how primitive the police force at the scene was. They were led into "abusing" the student and took it hook line and sinker. You could classify the person as mentally ill by definition he obviously was making bad choices that would only further his situation. Yet the tough pigs thought force would fix the problem. I blame both sides, a disruptive irrational person got the best of the police force. There was no need to injure him; a professional team would have kept him subdued and safe from escalating the situation and waited for time to let him calm down until he could quietly leave the area. Instead they strutted their big balls and made the situation worse. If they don't have training in this then I really do wonder if the next time I'm upset and the cops show up I'll take a few slugs for behaving badly. What makes me blame the police is their unprofessional handling of the situation. They're supposed to be "peace officers" but obviously they chose to turn this into an aggressive situation in which the hammer won. From the moment they arrived, many of them, they had physical superiority, there was no weapon, there was a person that wouldn't stand up. God forbid they seek other options instead of harming the individual to cement their power over them.
For those that don't know, this is very far from unordinary. I've hung with "bad" people and the police act like this all the time. They have the gun, they have the badge, in court they are a credible witness. Go up against them and you WILL LOSE without proof. Even with proof you are unlikely to win unless they kick the shit out of you while you stay absolutely motionless, even then you better hope your arm didn't move more than 2 inches cuz if it did you were attempting to violently assault an officer. I am exxagerating a bit but if you think this is uncharacterstic of police behavior you are ignorant (meaning that you just don't know).
Officers obviously need more training on how to handle a non dangerous situation. This comes up every time Joe Blow Black man with a rake is capped. They need to understand that having a gun, having control, does not mean using it to expedite the situation. If they have to spend 2 hours trying to calm the man down so be it. That's what they are payed to do, to keep everyone safe. Force should only be applied when NECCESSARY, and that is the downfall of this whole situation.
I like Slashdot sometime because the news that is so old I've already forgotten about it is brought back up the next week. It's like "week in review!"
or else!
The cops don't carry guns. A number of cops carry tasers, introduced this year, but have to attend a training course on how to use them, protocol, etc. During this course, some of the cops get shot with the taser so everyone can see what's involved. If they use the tasers (even draw them from their holsters), they have to fill out shitloads of paperwork. Of the times that the tasers have been drawn, in most situations the suspect has submitted and has not had to be shot.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What we need now is to have clothes with a conductive mesh woven into the cloth!
It doesn't even need to be particularly fine mesh, a couple of inches would probably be enough to draw the current away from the wearer.
Watch the cops eyes widen in disbelief as repeated applications of the 50,000 volts does *nothing* hah!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I have max karma. It's just true. I said the same thing back when the fading star was b4 and Kuroshin was trying to be the up and comer. Now Kuroshin is pretty much forgotten and digg wants the good readers. For whatever reason, the most desireable posters (and lets be fair: the least desireable too) stay with slashdot.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The power here is not timeliness, it's the audience.
Really? I thought it was the same old stupid fucking jokes, repeated endlessly... now THAT'S power!
A man is sitting in an airport, refusing to produce ID and refusing to leave the building. Upon refusal of leaving the building or even getting up, he is tased. After being tased he not only still refuses to leave but starts ranting about the TSA being brutal or corrupt with a scripted-sounding rant. The man is then tased again more than once after each time he refuses to leave the building....ect ect ect. If this happened in an airport I have a feeling people would be singing a different tune rather than calling out TSA brutality. This guys rants just sounded WAY too scripted to me...it was planned.
"I will not sit by..." No, but you'll hide in your little AC hole which is even more pathetic!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
How is that any different? What if the police had demanded to search him right there, or risk being tasered, and he had simply stayed on the floor? You're telling me that going limp on the floor or not moving is considered "suspicious?" They can tase me if, for some reason, I can't move or it hurts to move? Man, dead people must be TERRIBLE for the police. They scream at them to get up, and you tase them, and they STILL don't get up.
Not providing an ID when asked by authority sounds like he didn't provide ANY ID. He just didn't have his campus ID. Why didn't they ask him for a driver's license or some other form of identification? If he was leaving anyway, as the article said he was, why did they need to grab his arm at all?
The police are not supposed to be the ones inititalizing a physical confrontation. It's different if the criminal does, or shows intent to (having a weapon). Remember, these people are serving YOU (and everyone around you), you're not serving THEM.
No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring.
Is the UCLA library different from other UC libraries? I know for a fact that non-students are allowed in other UC libraries. If I were in a library and cops demanded my ID for no reason, I would get pretty angry, too. I don't know whether I would have reacted the same way or not.
I saw the video on TV right after this incident went down. I'm not sure which side I come down on, however.
:)
As has been mentioned before, cops are cops, and renta-cops are not. In any case, if the check was indeed random, Mr. Tabatabainejad stuck his neck in the noose the instant he refused to furnish his I.D. He then attempted to saunter away, perhaps regretting his initial defiance after all. I don't see any reason this should have gone as far as it did, with him certainly foregoing any chance of claiming to be a victim. (Websters' - victim: a person subjected to circumstances beyond their control).
Once he started resisting, it was just a matter of time before it turned into a confrontation...and this is where renta-cops get all warm and excited, wetting their panties like a little school girl who just had her first kiss. They get to show AUTHORITY!! (it was kind of funny, tho, seeing him do back-flips on command & all) - "How many times they say you can prod a perp before that thing runs down, Harv? Zap him once in the testicles just for me, please?"
All I can say is that Tabatabainejad should be thankful this happened today, with only a Taser being shoved up his ass, and not twenty years ago, with a Smith-Wesson... I got $10,000.00 for being a target, one time - can't wait to see how much Mr. T. thinks he should be paid for being forced to act like a pop-up doll. I hope he gets zip, by the way
Haven't heard anybody mention it yet, but the kid was handcuffed when they were shocking him. That, according to multiple claim-to-know people, is against pretty much every district's / precinct's rules.
Also, the guy was in the process of leaving when the officer(s?) grabbed his arm, that's why he shouts out "let go of me." Now I agree that the guy probably shouldn't have been such an asshole when he was asked to leave the first time, which provoked the staff to call the "cops," but he definitely didn't deserve any of this.
Also, "this is your patriot act!" --> wtf???
First, we're not catching anything before the video, which firsthand accounts make it seem like the guy should be tasered.
Based on what.
Second, they repeatedly warned him before tasing him each time.
Irrelevant. They had no business tasering a handcuffed suspect for being uncooperative.
Third, according to firsthand accounts and the story, he was provoking the crowd.
Watch the video. He wasn't doing anything more than screaming "here's your Patriot Act, here's your fucking abuse of power."
Sure, it looks like the cops overreacted, but not to the extent that you're saying.
Yes, they did, and they belong in jail for assault.
A civilian using a taser on someone in an argument has nothing to do with a cop using a taser to deal with people resisting arrest
You're right - the cops are held to a much higher standard.
Tazers were developed so that cops wouldn't have to resort to violence
Using a tazer is violence.
Or is anyone else having difficulty finding Tasers in the PATRIOT Act?
Maybe "kids" should stop raping others in the library at night.
Please, explain yourself. How did he want attention? Where are you getting that? The video starts with him after he's been tazered.
No, the video starts at a computer screen on the other side of the room. At which time, you can hear the guy screaming at the top of his lungs, "I AM NOT LEAVING! YOU CAN NOT MAKE ME LEAVE!" Then you hear him get tazed. Afterwards there is a bit of silence, poleice telling him to leave, more screaming, then another tazing. THEN you can see the action on video.
Let me ask you this: Should the cops have just left? When someone is where they are not supposed to be, acting belligerent and confrontational, refusing to cooperate, should the police just leave? Maybe the police should only arrest those that are cooperative.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
or so they claim. Its funny these accounts are turning up now. Not a few days ago. A few days ago when the campus paper was first writing about this, they couldn't find anyone who remotely backed up the police's story and the video doesn't support it either. He's done nothing in that video to indicate he's a threat and justify their behaviour. End of story. He could be the biggest asshole on the planet, but if he's not being physically threatening it doesn't justify that response.
I know the University of Sydney, where I studied, usually has tons of people on campus and at the library who are not students or staff of the uni. After all it's got a huge library that is useful to more than just students. Sounds like it's a bit harder to get into a decent library over in the land of the free. Why?
Software patents delenda est.
Clearly the crowd was not a threat and they knew that. Most cops are just scared pussies with small dicks. That's why they use excessive force in the first place.
Oddly enough R. King had the shit beat out of him because he wouldn't stay down.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Whether it is justified or not my question is why does this man keep yelling about the patriot act? The patriot act does not give University Police the power to taser someone.
Maybe they didn't properly identify themselves. Criminals dress as cops all the time to take advantage of someone. Obviously they didn't want to give their badge numbers, so they probably did not properly identify themselves. Most pigs don't, and they get real pissed when you question anything about them. That's because they have small dicks acording to the latest CNN-USA Today Gallup Poll.
Maybe this guy doesn't realize that the fastest way to get hit with a taser in this country is to be any-color-but-white and start mouthing off to a cop and refusing his lawful orders?
...and that also brings me to why they continued to insist he stand up rather than calling for a stretcher he could be strapped onto and moved safely on... If the cops carry him out, or the EMTs wheel him out on a stretch, his lawsuit is that much stronger. "Your honor, how could the force have not been excessive? Every attempt at compliance was met with more force and my client was unable to leave the building under his own power."
I would argue the first two tasers are both justified. A police-officer places himself at risk when he attempts to carry a handcuffed (and leg-manacled) limp adult down a flight of stairs. He could easily injure one or more officers if he chose to resume fighting while they were carrying him. Many decisions about what risks to take and what threat warrants a violent response are ultimately up to the police officer's discretion in the moment. I probably would have insisted he get up too--fuck this guy and his attitude... If you want to be in the library after hours, be prepared to show some ID! If I was a policeman responding to this call, my concern would be the guy was looking for the opportunity to sue the University, the CHP, or me (or all three.)
Where I take exception is the third-hit and forward. He was disoriented and pissed after the first-two, but it appeared he was starting to get up when they hit him with the third-charge. After watching the angles available online, this seems to be when the police go from appropriate, measured force for their own safety and into the realm of "attitude adjustment." This was when the litany of "motherfuckers" and "cocksuckers" started coming out, and the guy was essentially incoherent for the remaining time of the video. From here on out, it is unreasonable. The thid-shock appeared to have been applied in frustration, and not because of non-compliance--indeed the subject appears to begin to comply by starting to stand-up when he's hit with the third charge.
So to all of you who say "He had it all coming," you're wrong. And to all of you who said "HE had none of it coming... you're wrong too. There, that should piss-off just about everybody...
Who did what now?
If one were to follow your logic the police would continue to ask someone to please be nice long after they initially refuse. OH please, good sir. Please behave yourself. I realize that you are not threatening others physically, so I will not stray from my initial request, which if I may recap, is please curtail your brutishly uncivilized behavior. Oh please listen to me, please? I will continue to ask you to respond to my commands, but if you refuse while still being non-physically threatening, I really must continue to use words forever. Yes, I'm an asshole. I'm sorry. When do requests end and orders begin? Seems like these officers were clear about what they wanted the unidentified individual to do. How long should they shoot the shit before intervening?
Again and again, the police apologists come out in droves saying "Oh, but you don't know how HARD it is being a cop!" and "The guy was definitely asking for it!" I'm just going to say what I said last time this came up (original post: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=192848&cid =15830849) Full text:
The perfect reply to this argument (which comes up every time someone mentions that most cops are assholes) is this: a McDonald's employee has more accountability than a cop does. As a 16 year old burger-flipper, if a customer acts like a complete asshole--even going so far as to yelling and cussing you out--you are NOT allowed to verbally abuse the customer in return in any way, shape or form. At most you can ask him/her to leave the building, that's it.
Years ago, I worked at McDonald's for four months and a very good friend of mine was punched in the face. Through a plate glass window. A woman tried to order at the pickup window, was told she needed to drive around again, so she punched through the drive-through window, hitting my friend in the face. If she (my friend) had hit her back, there's not a doubt in my mind that she would have lost her job. Instead, she walked away calmly and called her supervisor and the police.
Now, I'm not implying that the police shouldn't use force when necessary. I'm also not denying that they're human too, that it's a nasty, dirty job and I'm sure it's really rough on them. But you know what? Working at McDonald's is in many was rougher (if you doubt this, I could tell you some more horror stories... absolutely the worst 4 months of my life, period.), and yet their workers are held to a much higher standard than the police. Why is that? Why do so many of us make allowances for the police to exercise HUGE leaps of personal discretion, to bend the law whenever it suits them? It's a tough job, but they chose it and we shouldn't let them bend the rules (or ignore them) whenever they feel like it. I saw a TON of asshole customers at McDonalds, yet I didn't say a foul word to any of them. I didn't spit in their food either (no one did--they would've been fired on the spot.) I did my job as professionally as I could, regardless of how shitty I was treated.
And I was a fucking fry cook!
Please please please please PLEASE tell me we can hold our police officers up to the same standards as our burger flippers.
Police Taser Anti-War Protesters in Pittsburgh She looked pretty harmless lying on the ground to me. Direct link to video. Jump to 6:42 or 7:02 - 7:13!
More video and coverage of Pittsburgh Taser-ing of protesters.
Coverage of protests against taser deaths in Ohio and California.
Third Taser Death in a Month in Florida.
All coverage of tasers by Democracy Now.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Cops don't get tazers to use them on people who are uncooperative. Their asses belong in jail for assault.
I agree with you that the guy was most likely being a jackass, and should have been forcefully removed by the premises. I was just pointing out, as you have, that there are far more civilized ways to go about it.
A lot of people are making the point that, "He was just begging for an ass kicking." Quite possibly true. However, it is not law enforcement's role to provide him one. The only, and I mean _ONLY_ time law enforcement is justified in physically attacking (as opposed to restraining) someone is when they pose a danger to themselves or those around them. Then they are to use the minimum amount of force necessary to subdue and restrain the person. Tasers are not tools of expediency.
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Spot on. Getting tased hurts like shit. I know. All you geek nerd bitches out there that keep saying he deserved FIVE fucking shots are gay with small dicks (like the pigs). One is enough for almost anyone. Two if they continue to move. It's their use of FIVE shots after they themselves KNOW how one feels that is the problem here. They have to be shot with one once to be issued one.
Couple things need to be addressed:
....with the TASER it's a million times dummied-down in that the only thing happening to you is that your muscles are getting a mini-super-workout.
We don't know the whole story and there is no way for us to accurately judge or justify (or NOT justify) the actions of either side based upon what we have viewed in this video.
Many of you have mentioned that it takes a couple minutes, and in one instance "15 minutes" to recover from being shocked by the TASER - these are miss-leading and incorrect statements. As part of a thesis I wrote in college - I personally was shocked by the X26 TASER (the same device that was used on the young man in this video).
During my research, I personally received two consecutive shots from the X26 at a range of 10 feet away...When the device was deployed, two straight fish-hooks punctured my shirt, outer layer of my skin and then penetrated about one-eighth of an inch into my muscle tissue. This sounds horrific but it was almost a surreal feeling.
Each experience lasted for five seconds and what I felt at the time was NOT likened to pain; instead, it is best described as a complete loss of control...and once again "surreal".
A common miss-conception is that the TASER jolts at 50,000 volts - this is incorrect...50,000 volts is actually the "energy reserve" that the TASER has in store. In reality, the device sends a "low-level" current which is slightly higher than the same electrical current that our brain sends a muscle when our brain wants it to contract the muscle.
This current passes through your muscle tissue at an intensely fast interval (causing nine muscle contractions per second) and in doing so is over-riding the nervous system which is trying to compensate and bring these contractions under control - At this point all your energy is diverted into muscle compensation...So, it's not a matter of all your muscles in your body contracting...instead, it's an issue of where none of your muscles are responding because your brain is not sending messages to them.
What is happening is occurring near the surface of the skin and ONLY between the points of the two darts. What the person experiences is muscle contraction beyond what is physiologically possible for the human body to perform on its own.
This is the part that makes people scream out because they go limp and can't respond. Imagine this, you do nine push-ups in one second...well, you know how crappy we feel when we do nine push-ups in thirty seconds...so just expedite that crappy feeling in a split second. When it's over, you're still able to get up, walk around, smile and say "hi" to your buddies
In my case, when the TASER was shut off - I recovered instantly and was able to stand up and walk around with no pain whatsoever. In fact, I felt like I just got down with a massage.
It's important to remember that the TASER is an energy weapon...NOT, a stun gun.
Energy Weapons use multiple on/off and low-level electrical currents in order to stimulate muscle contraction. A stun-gun sends a solid arc current through muscle tissue which causes an electrical shock which can burn and kill muscle tissue.
Tasers are not tools of expediency. That's a really great point.
Police brutality: See website on Rodney King! This is merely another case in the millions recorded incidents. YouTube is for trolls to make old stories new again!
Lemme tel you something. I'm an iconoclast. I push boundaries by accident.
An iconoclast pushes boundaries, but not by accident.
But I have never been tazed by the police. This jackass could have prevented this EASILY.
Yes, and if the cops had shot him, you could make the same bullshit statement. You are missing the point....but then, you don't even know what you are.
Most cops have small dicks. I should know. I've slept with 144 of them. Compare this to nerds who have average to large size dicks. Their is a direct correlation between general ethical behavior and dick size. Larger dicks lead to more ethical behavior. Smaller dicks lead to less ethical behavior. The dick size is one of many determining factors when a young man decides to become a cop. What you end up with, by a vast majority, are a bunch of cops walking around with small dicks and inferiority complexes. This combination immediately leads to violence, abuse of power, corruption, and homosexuality. Just observer the average cop's nose and/or hand size for qualitative evidence of these claims.
Hey, idiot... being assaulted with a taser IS violence. I dare you, DARE YOU, to be assaulted with one and, within the amount of time the cops gave this kid, get up and say you were not just the victim of violence.
That's assuming all tazers have equal strength. Police-grade tazers, I'm sure, are on the upper end of the spectrum.
And also adjustable - supposedly these the campos used were set on the lowest power level - much like you'd presume was the case in the video I posted.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Has anyone got one of Michael Richards being Tasered 5 times on stage? He sure as heck earned it...
you had me at #!
Did you see the video? The suspect was incapacitated on the floor, and the cops were mostly just standing around (except when they were tazing the suspect again). There was plenty of reasonable opportunity for one of the officers to give the students his badge number.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Well my sound card isn't working at the moment, so let me ask you this: Did the cops attempt to arrest him before tazing him? Yelling at a cop isn't a crime(or rather, it shouldn't be more than ticketable "disturbing the peace" type offense.) Resisting arrest is, and depending on the type of resistance it *might* merit the use of less-lethal (NOT "non-lethal") force such as tazers. If they tried to arrest him and he *actively* refused to be put under arrest (physically resisted the handcuffs being put on), then I'd say they had the right to taze. If he was just sitting there passively resisting, the cops have absolutely no business using a potentially lethal device to physically subdue him. There were FIVE of them, for fucks' sake. The proper thing to do was have three of them move in, two of them with tazers drawn and one with handcuffs, and explain that they were putting him under arrest. The guy with the cuffs firmly takes the guys arms to cuff him, and if he violently tried to shake him off THEN you taze him.
There is never a justification for using painful and potentially lethal force to subdue someone who hasn't yet done more than resisted passively.
When the police tell you to jump, you say, "how high"?
Well, yeah, sorta. When they tell you to leave, you say "OK! See you guys later." You don't fall to the ground screaming. What were they supposed to do, give up and go home? Should the police only arrest the cooperative? Now, if they really are running around telling people to jump and tasing those that don't, when they come to you, you jump and then make your way to the command station and bitch to their superior. Having a video of the whole thing won't hurt as we see here (give that to the local news station). What if a cop wants to see if you have explosives under your feet and tell you to jump. Do you tell him to fuck off?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Seconded. In fact, that's quite possibly the best point brought up the whole discussion.
This whole video is a fucking scary affair. Last i checked, a taser was used to incapacitate a hostile suspect. This guy, while mouthy, doesn't look like he made any hostile actions at all. We've learned from shows like Jackass that if you taser somebody, they're staying down for a while.
For me, the really worrying part of this video is at the end, with the officer warning people to "Stand back or you'll get tased". If you give an idiot a non-lethal weapon, then he's probably not going to think twice about using it. And therein lies the problem. While police can get away with excessive non-lethal force, it's going to keep happening. Thankfully, with the advent of cellphone cameras, they might not be able to do it for much longer.
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
After the Nobel prize example: "Pulling the wing off a bird makes it deaf. Fly little bird fly!!!"
The 2006 edition feature a breakthrough example: "Tazing a terrorist^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H student from persian origins makes it deaf. STAND UP!!! STAND UP!!!"
Home of Faramir Paint Shop Pro scripts
Well, before the video gets to the action, you hear a lot of screaming. The kind of screaming that hurts your throat.
"DON'T TOUCH ME" (Over and over)
"HERE'S YOUR PATRIOT ACT"
"HERE'S YOUR FUCKING ABUSE OF POWER"
"I...SAID... I... WOULD... LEEEEAAAAAVE"
"I got tased for no reason"
At the beginning you hear the police saying, "Stop fighting us". And later you hear an awful lot of "Stand up" (and his answer was "fuck off")
After seven minutes, you still hear the police saying, "stand up" over and over and many screams of bloody murder. I can say that this guy was tased more than 5 times or he screamed more times than he was tased.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
It sounds like this guy got a highly effective lesson in the fact that Americans are not prone to martyrdom.
In all of these taser threads, I see a lot of people assuming they're not safe, but I have yet to see one single supported claim that they are inherently unsafe. I can imagine if a person has a pacemaker it's unsafe, but at this point I'm not seeing any evidence it's unsafe.
That said, I can't imagine why 5 police officers were unable to move a handcuffed victim safely to a squad car. And then for them to use a disabling device as a means of getting the guy to move is something I'm sure was at least wrong on their part. Maybe not criminal, but definitely poor tool selection at the least.
The video does demonstrate audibly that there were at least a handful of vocal students yelling at the police to stop using the taser after the first one. The impression I got was that it was an unpleasant and somewhat inhumane sight to see.
At this point I just want to hear the police justification for this painful and botched attempt to remove the guy. I can't imagine how it will go well because the guy appears to offer no physical threat or significant deterrant to simply picking him up and hauling him away.
"Let me ask you this: Should the cops have just left? When someone is where they are not supposed to be, acting belligerent and confrontational, refusing to cooperate, should the police just leave? Maybe the police should only arrest those that are cooperative."
And what part of arresting this individual necessitated five repeated tasings, including four while the individual was already in handcuffs and subdued? The guy, from what we have seen and what we have read in any article on this matter, did not physically threaten the officers nor the students in the library. He refused to leave. This would make him a trespasser, the usual result of which is an arrest and a quick trip down to the station. He did not fight the cops, nor did he make any threatening moves after he had been handcuffed. In fact, he was handcuffed before he was officially arrested!
You're attacking a straw man. Nobody is saying that the cops should have "just left", we're saying that they should've slapped some cuffs on this guy, loaded him into the back of the car, and gave him a good night's stay with the rest of the kids down at the precinct. Tasering was entirely and completely overkill, and I would classify this as "torture" or at the very very least "gross negligence and abuse of power". I hope these cops do time for this - their position as law enforcers make them even more accountable than the average man.
Much like Kuroshin before it, the sign of the end for Digg is when they start begging slashdot's community to come over for fresher news.
/. users to come over; given the attitude most people there had to this site when I was a regular, I'd be surprised (and rather amused) if it happened...
Well for me, the sign of the end for kuro5hin was when it was clear that not only was it overrun with trolls, but that Rusty wasn't going to do anything meaningful about it, instead putting all his faith in the rating system. Given how many trolls were trusted users though, that was never going to work. I'd left by the time he flipped out and went completely the other way, but from what I understand when he finally took action, it was too much, far too late.
I wasn't aware of k5 ever begging for
It's official. Most of you are morons.
From TFA:
Young, however, has said the officers could not have known at the time that Tabatabainejad was not a threat nor could they have been sure that he was not armed
That, and a guy can seriously hurt himself after being handcuffed if he continues to resist. You try cuffing someone and dragging the down stairs, cramming them into your car, and then dragging back up stairs and into the substation. I think that tasing him was actually less damaging than dragging him all over campus.
BTW, shooting him would have been entirely and completely overkill. Tasing was about the only tool the police had at their disposal to make him cooperate.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
That's because they tasered him so much he can't think.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
A finnish guy filmed two mall guards beating up a man and posted in on YouTube. The press got a whiff of it and now one of them was suspended, the other one fired and there's an ongoing criminal investigation. Yay for YouTube. A link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvsUA-qEzy0
The event may follow their carriers but it does not end it, nor does it necessarily stop repeat behavior.
Those cops may lose their jobs (as they should) but will end up with nice jobs offered by employers who are racist or approve of excessive force...
I already know a guy who only sided with the cops because the student was not a white Christian.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
With all those highly educated leaders of tomorrow (a ton of other students) at UCLA
How come nobody spoke up or came to his defence?
These college kids talk the talk but when the time comes, they do nothing. I heard someone asking the cops for their info, that's good, but ultimately the crowd's response was "yes sir" I'll shut up and watch you assault my fellow student. We're in our 20s but are too weak or spineless to stand up to rent-a-copy authority.
The video was up within hours of the actual incident. I'm a student at UCLA and based on the little information that has been spread on the news and the hearsay here, I think there is so little known for sure that the whole thing may have been blown out of proportion. Who can tell what the cops and kid were doing based on the video? The views here seem to be pretty evenly split regarding which party was more at fault, the cops or the kid. I'm somewhat surprised this made national news.
Ya, these cops definitely got a little carried away. From what I've witnessed in real life, people only need to be tazed once to figure out that they need to comply. I'm a paramedic and the only situation that I've ever seen someone tazed multiple times is when they are loaded with meth. If the cops really wanted him to go outside, they should have just pulled him outside. Its not like he would have been able to stop them after being tazed....
Before criticizing the officers, you might want to read the UCLA Police Department Taser Policy. The policy explicitly authorizes the use of Tasers' "Drive Stun" mode against passive resistors. In some circumstances, this can include passive resistors already in handcuffs. When officers are following policy, I think it's more worthwhile to criticize the policy than the officers. Criticizing the policy is the only way to change things for the future and hold those who formulated the policy in the first place to account.
Baaaa. Baaaaa. Baaaaa...
At least now he'll have an interesting thesis to write.
This issue is just like the recent Israel-Hezbollah war-let: a massive overreaction resulting in undue harm to one party at no gain to the other, and extremely bad PR for the 'winner'.
Does it describe a general US attitude toward 'minorities'?
L
Nobody is suggesting the police should leave. How about arresting him? Or would you prefer perhaps shooting him? Just because a cop is issued a tazer doesn't mean their allowed to use it on someone who argues with them non-violently. A good cop would never have let the situation get out of control - with three officers they could easily have subdued and arrested him. They used the tazer like it was a cattle prod. All officers involved should be fired, especially the one who threatens a student at the end.
Wow... Every time someone mentions here something about ID cards, everybody is raising the Holly Privacy Bible. Today, A guy which has done nothing but wanting to keep his privacy is beaten by the police and you say it's a good thing ?
Terrorism is, you know, about, uh, terror I think. It seems its working with you. By saying you are happy that this guy got tasered, you are entering their game. You acknowledge that you are afraid of them. And beside, now they can tell: "See, Americans are not respecting the rights they are promoting".
What sig ?
It's to keep out people that don't belong, plain and simple. Students want expensive equipment available without having to pay for thefts, students want to use the library at 3AM and be safe. IDs are the easiest way for that to happen. On my old rural campus it would've been overkill, and mostly they let IDs slide, but at my new school in the middle of a city I do appreciate the added layer of security.
It would be more humane to nuke the offending student from orbit. The cost is probably about the same, taking lawsuits into account.
If cops keep doing this shit there is going to be serious bloodshed VERY soon.
Kids will start to violently resist in mass during situations like this.
Then cops will call for backup, and people will end up being shot.
Congratulations, Police! You just went from checking college ID's to fucking KILLING PEOPLE.
Just handcuff the kid, pick him up, and carry him out. We didn't even get to see what they did to him after they got him to the station.
This is the most disturbing video I've seen in a long time, and I've seen a lot of disturbing videos. Those cops should be fired and put in jail.
This kid is a tool, you can tell 10 seconds into the video when he starts into the "Patriot Act" and "dont touch me" crap.
In my opinion, he stole from the basketball playbook and DREW A FOUL.
He wanted the attention, and these idiots played right into it.
All they had to do is cuff him (maybe 1 TASER shock required) and drag him out.
If he resisted, they could have let him scream on the library floor for 20 minutes,
then see who had any sympathy for him.
Maybe the youtube video would've been "Islamist a-hole annoying everyone in the library".
Probably, you would never have heard about it again.
P.S. I'm no fan of our current knee jerk "Patriot Act" either, but this is a pathetic way to protest.
Lurking in the desert
Should the cops have just left? When someone is where they are not supposed to be, acting belligerent and confrontational, refusing to cooperate, should the police just leave? Maybe the police should only arrest those that are cooperative.
Why the dichotomy? Don't they teach cops basic "come-along" techniques in the US?
Put the guy in a forarm-elbow lock. It's uncomfortable but only really painful if the guy resists. So you can easily pull him outside and politely let him scream blue murder when he's out.
Using a tazer on someone as punishment for disobeying an order is not the way to do things. The tazer should only be used to incapacitate a suspect who may otherwise be dangerous.
get yer facts straight
..........FULL STOP.
he UCLA police officer videotaped last week using a Taser gun on a student also shot a homeless man at a campus study hall room three years ago and was earlier recommended for dismissal in connection with an alleged assault on fraternity row, authorities said.
UCLA police confirmed late Monday that the officer who fired the Taser gun was Terrence Duren, who has served in the university's Police Department for 18 years.
Duren, who was named officer of the year in 2001, also has been involved in several controversial incidents on campus.
In an interview with The Times on Monday night, Duren, 43, defended his record as a campus police officer and urged people to withhold judgment until the review of his Taser use is completed.
"I patrol this area the same way I would want someone to patrol the neighborhoods where I live," he said. "People make allegations against cops all the time. Saying one thing and proving it are two different things."
While he would not directly talk about why he used the Taser on the student, he said a videotape of any arrest doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.
"If someone is resisting, sometimes it's not going to look pretty taking someone into custody," he said. "If you have to use some force, it's not going to look pretty. That's the nature of this job."
A student's cellphone video of the incident has been broadcast around the world and focused much criticism on the officer.
But Duren -- who was back on duty at the UCLA campus Monday night -- said he can roll with these punches and wants to explain himself to students critical of his actions.
"In this line of business, you have to have a thick skin," he added. "I am proud of my service as a cop."
The incident occurred about 11 p.m. Nov. 14 in a library filled with students studying for midterm examinations.
Senior Mostafa Tabatabainejad, 23, was asked by Duren and other university police officers for his ID as part of a routine nightly procedure to make sure that everyone using the library after 11 p.m. is a student or otherwise authorized to be there.
Authorities said Tabatabainejad refused repeated requests to provide identification or to leave. The officers decided to use the Taser to incapacitate Tabatabainejad after he went limp while they were escorting him out and after he urged other library patrons to join his resistance, according to the university's account.
The video shows portions of the incident, in which Tabatabainejad can be heard screaming in pain when the Taser shocks are administered.
The tape, which has been broadcast on the YouTube website and TV newscasts, prompted widespread criticism both on campus and from outsiders. On Friday, more than 200 students held a march to the police station, while acting Chancellor Norman Abrams tried to quell the critics by announcing an independent investigation of the Taser use. Abrams said UCLA had received numerous e-mails and calls from concerned alumni and parents.
Tabatabainejad's attorney, Stephen Yagman, said his client was shocked five times with the Taser after he refused to show his ID because he thought he was being singled out for his Middle Eastern appearance. Tabatabainejad is of Iranian descent but is a U.S. citizen by birth and a resident of Los Angeles.
Duren said Monday that he joined the UCLA police force after being fired from the Long Beach Police Department in the late 1980s. He said he was a probationary officer at the time and was let go because of poor report-writing skills and geographical knowledge.
In May 1990, he was accused of using his nightstick to choke someone who was hanging out on a Saturday in front of a UCLA fraternity. Kente S. Scott alleged that Duren confronted him while he was walking on the street outside the Theta Xi fraternity house.
Scott sued the university, and according to court records, UCLA officials moved to have Duren dismissed from the police force. But after an independent administrative hearing, officials ove
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If he really wanted to protest all he has to do is speak to the library's administrator. Refusing to leave their property while trespassing is in no way any kind of protest, and there's no reason to believe he'll change anything through it.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
Here's a question for ya: if I see a cop do something flagrantly illegal, which poses a physical threat, do I get to perform a citizen's arrest on the spot? I mean, seriously, these cops weren't tasing the guy because they were physically threatened (he was in handcuffs). They were tasing him because, well, they wanted to. That's assault. Shouldn't someone have, you know, done a bit more than ask for a badge number? I'm not saying it's the wisest strategy, since you'll likely get beaten down, but is it _legal_?
I used to read Digg quite a lot, but I was a Slashdot reader first. Digg has basically become somewhat "mob rule" - regardless of how well-planned or well-argued a point is, if everyone on Digg doesnt agree is "dugg" into oblivion. Then, in every thread, you also have to guy spouting "Digg me down!", who, of course, has close to 100 "diggs" up.
Diggs threading is also a joke. Threads end up extremely long with people doing followups to followups.. but since it only supports a 'depth' of 1, it's just a giant mess.
So, Mr Digg User, you enjoy Digg while we enjoy Slashdot. I'm suprised you even have time to troll over here, considering how up to date and fast news reaches you guys!
You can't argue with the video and audio evidence in the tazer incident, just as you can't with the Michael Richard's racial rant (both events were captured on cell phones). It is outrageous behavior, and a sad commentary on where we are nowadays in America. It proves there is still a lot of mending and healing that needs to be done. The alternative is very bleak.
Thankfully, web sites like Slashdot allow people to debate these issues and overall that is a great thing for democracy and for reinforcing the American Value that racism in any form will not be tolerated. We need to be one big team regardless of race, color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, whatever.
Phil http://www.indierockcafe.com http://www.webcontentprofessionals.org indierock@indierockcafe.com
Can anyone explain to me what run by the University of California means in relation to a law enforcement agency?
I'm not an US citizen and more than a little bit confused about what I have read/seen, and think if the whole issue is half as bad as I understand it, you guys should better start to worry.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
This reminds me of the cops a few years back who decided to remove protesters from a government office area by dripping "pepper gas" into their eyes - in front of television cameras and everything. How exactly does creating closeup footage of bohemian girls screaming in pain resolve a trespassing problem? Obviously the pain went from being a compliance technique to a kind of experiment, and this became the same thing. Saying it's "sadistic" gets right to the point. I have a feeling that UC will regret hiring this cop many years after he's been fired.
It bothers me that the cop's fellow officers apparently weren't doing anything to wind the situation down.
*disclaimer: I haven't seen the video due to restricted net access*
It's this sort of crap that's going to get a very useful and life-saving tool taken away from cops who use it right.
There's no reason to deploy a taser on someone who is ALREADY ON THE GROUND AND NO LONGER FIGHTING!
I have used my taser as a police officer twice. The first time, the wires broke on contact and I had to chase him. The second time, the guy fell to the ground and became verbally and physically compliant.
Tasers cannot be used as FREAKING CATTLE PRODS! They're a sophisticated, useful tool that is meant to incapacitate a VIOLENT criminal in order to protect *both* the officer and the offender from serious bodily injury. When deployed in a sensible, responsible fashion, tasers save lives. When used 3 to 5 times on a compliant subject on the ground, they don't help.
In Florida (where I am a sworn law enforcement officer), most agencies are not allowed to use a taser unless a subject is actively resisting arrest (i.e. fighting and/or running away). A large powerful agency nearby was using them on everyone for passive resistance (i.e. "I'm Ofc. Jones, who are you?" "Screw you pig!" *taser*)
A pass back home? To where, LA? He was BORN IN THE US you idiot.
"I forgot my mantra."
To the poster who commented that being tased with the darts isn't painful, that's not how the system was being used here. The "drive-stun" mode (which is how I am assuming the weapon was being used) causes pain and is not incapacitating. In fact Taser recommends that care be taken in its use because it can result in lengthy struggles when the pain isn't sufficient to cause the subject to comply immediately.
Duh.
Oh and those same cases, Taser warns, are where police are often criticized for excessive force or brutality.
The simple fact is, Americans aren't terrorists. Anyone who tells you otherwise has been corrupted by public education, sharing, or evolutionists.
You know what, it's the cooperative weirdo like you that has me scared.
cops fill out forms after arriving at a crash/crime scene, pick up the human trash involved at some later time, annoy motorists, and eat donuts while filling out more forms. not really enough of them to perform the protect & serve motto unless you're a politician, another cop, or donut shop cashier.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The alternative was shooting? Shooting an unarmed, handcuffed person lying on the ground? Are you nuts?
What do the witness do to stop the police ??????? I'm from Argentina, 30.000 persons were missing (1976-1982) . It began in the same way. Do you know something ? The police and army that kill our people were trained by the USA. Think about this. The next time may be you. Sorry.
in these situations, at least what should be done is to put the names of the officers (and why not their superiors) that's the only way it they would start caring. They should be tagged at youtube...
First off, I doubt that he was looking for attention. He was in a library.
2'ndly, this stuff goes on ALL the time. Back in the early 80's, I worked as an EMT for Ft. Collin's Colorado. The amount of Police brutality was shocking. One officer that I remember was Ernie Teliz. In one particular case, we had a patient in the ER who had numerous bones broken in both hands and several ribs, and bruises everywhere. According to Teliz, the guy fell on the door handle of the police car. The patient was screaming that Teliz had beaten the guy and done this. Found out later, that the patient was being simply being transported from Ft. Collins to Larimer County Jail, for car theft (a 10 minute ride at most). We are not talking Rape or Murder. Just a simple car theft. What I heard later is that the ER doc talked to the Ft. Collins Attorney who laughed it all off.
I only hope that more of these images make it around. Bad cops need to be stopped and cops will rarely take down another cop, no matter how illegal they were. And interestingly, I would be looking in small to medium size towns and college for the bad cops. In the large cities, most of the cops just want to survive and do their job. They are not looking to cause issues. OTH, cops like Teliz are cowards and will hide in a place where the victim can not hurt them. Otherwise, they kind of ppl would have simply enlisted and gone to Iraq to have their fun, or been in a big city.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
When is it *legal* for a crowd to turn on a police officer?
Is it basically ALWAYS illegal, and the members of the crowd have to hope a judge and jury are understanding?
haha loser troll.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Cops come in and tell you to stand up, else there will be consequences... if the idiot decided to resist then he deserves to be tasered. In his own country, he would have been shot. Maybe the cops should have just shot him and make him feel at home... but then again, if police were allowed to do their job, then he wouldn't have felt he could mouth off like a little immature kid.
The fool deserved to be tasered. The fact he was given an option by the police, to stand or get shocked, he wanted to be given some juice so I don't know what the shock factor is all about (sorry for the pun).
This is typical of "police brutality" claims. Some moron stands up to show people how he was shot and beatin by police and what we actually see is some thug mouthing off to a man with authority AND a firearm. Seriously people, if you're so stupid to mouth off to a man with a gun, you should be shot dead, shocked till you piss your pants, bulgened till your mentally retarded. You wouldn't pop off to the drug dealer with a gun... oh, becuase he will shoot you for doing so! Yeah... mouth off to the cop, becuase you can, makes you feel big inspite the fact he's able kill you all the same.
They had to tell that jack-ass more than once to stand up. I think they did an excellent job. They should have broke the guys ribs and legs and dragged him out as if he were a rag doll.
Ive seen a lot of people commenting that the Cops in the video are idiots, and a few saying that the student was an idiot.
I move that all involved parties are atleast a little retarded.
The student was stupid for refusing to leave when asked politely, then complaining and screaming when told by police officers to leave. Then more idiotic yet for not cooperating after being tased, and told he would be tased more - something he obviously knew he wouldn't enjoy. The whole time screaming about how our justice system is working. Yes, my good sir... the police officers are in place to enforce rules set in place by society - rules you certainly knew you were being violated by yourself, even after being told to stop.
The cops are idiots because they continued to tase the student when he obviously was set on not cooperating, after being tased multiple times. theres a point when you have to go old-school and just haul his out kicking and screaming.
But in the end, ive really gotta side with the cops in the situation... Tasers are a nice piece of equipment. they definately made too liberal of use with theirs, but i think calling "police brutality" in the situation is too much. People who intentionally violate laws need to understand that being arrested wont be a pleasant experience if you resist.
My hand touched her hand. Her hand touched her boob. By the transitive property, I got some boob! Algebra is awesome!
So, should we allow the police to zap suspects when they dont know or refuse to answer their questions? How do you know that this person was really able to stand up that short time after the tazing? How did the officers know that the person was able to stand up?
Tazing? Once maybe, IF the suspect is refusing to cooperate, and beeing violent, BEFORE beeing put in handcuffs. After getting cuffed the officers should simply have carried him out, or if the 3 officers where unable to carry the person out of the building then call for backup.
Correct way do do it:
- Ask the person to leave
- If person does not leave - arrest for tresspassing. Use force if he's restisting to get cuffed.
- If the person is violent after getting cuffed then simply strap his feet together too and carry him out.
Only time a person should need to use a tazer or gun is to stop a person from injuring someone else, not as an threat to get someone to do what they want.
BTW, is passive resistance really unlawful after beeing arrested??
should obviously attend a video course. He won't receive an Oscar for filming backs, lamps and cubicles.
Ah, good ol' video cell phone technology - the death of Kramer (Michael Richards)
Where would we be without it?
(and dupe)
Actually, I noticed a story in the mysterious future yesterday which would have been a dupe (it was about the DTN) and I wrote a nice little piece about slashdot running its own DTN by duping articles multiple times and ensuring they get through.
Anyway, they removed it before it went live and took away my chance of a +5.
Damn slashdot for actually listening to us and giving us the firehose to help pre-moderate articles.
liqbase
They have issued their own info about the incident at: http://www.ucpd.ucla.edu/ucpd/zippdf/2006/Taser%20 11-15-06.pdf (Yes, it IS brilliant to have a whitespace in a filename on tha Internets)
Kuro5hin is still good, though. It's not as active as before, but it does have original articles added every few days. Plus I like the diaries feature.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Heh, truth hurts, don't it? Seriously, I see you wanted to make a real point by... posting anonymously.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Whoa, slow down there.
Yes, the student was carded randomly, around 11:30 PM, in a library that is only for students, at least after hours. And not just in the library, from what I understand, but in the computer lab, where (iirc) there is a posted policy that you must have your BruinCard if you're using the lab.
This town has a lot of homeless people and the campus has a lot of younger kids running around, also. For security, it is necessary to do these random checks at night and remove people who are not supposed to be there.
And besides, how is one's privacy invaded if they're asked to prove that they're a student in an area that requires ID anyway? It's not any more of an invasion of privacy to have to swipe that same card to open the door to a dorm building, call the elevator, let yourself into a dining hall, or even enter your res hall after hours. The UCLA BruinCard is critical to access just about anything on campus, including said computer lab. I'm sure most campuses are the same way...
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
They do more than pass around knowledge out here
Hmm, I think they should better stick to passing around knowledge and leaving the passing around of taser shocks out of it. Anyway, here is the official account, which is in no direct words mentioned on the page by the way.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Erm, maybe you get arrested or something?
Certainly I don't expect campus police to act violently under the circumstances or consider it a reasonable reaction.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What about guests of students?
Or people trying to find a student to pass on a message?
Or those helping a student with something?
There are plenty of reasons to be in the library & lab and not have a card, just so long as they're not using the resources and leave as soon as they are done.
Too bad any of those pigs is still breathing.
Remember, folks, if you decide to resist a nazi in any way, you've got to be ready and willing to kill it.
Not allowed. The library itself is closed entirely to non-students after 11PM. Hell, you can't even bring non-student guests into your dorm with you after 9PM unless you sign them in as a guest. There are people waiting in the lobby that check in anyone who passes through.
They take student security very seriously here.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
this guy should have watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gCCjFbFXn8/
are we a police state yet?
Oh, please. Do you really think that the obviously absurd expectations and low level of training exhibited by the campus cop(s) involved is an indication of what "police" (as in, "all police") do? Have you suddenly found that your local municipality's laws have changed? Have you suddenly stopped seeing the firing of cops caught doing this sort of thing? In a "police state," this is policy, not a much-yelled-about, firing/arresting event. Your question is no different than asking whether or not, since some airline pilot was caught heading to work under the influence, we're in a "drunk pilot state." There are also badly broken people in other professional roles... I'm sure you've heard some stories. Does that mean we're in a "rapist dentist state?"
What we are in is a "hyper extrapolation state," where the incorrect actions of 1/100,000,000 people is discussed here as if congress had just passed some new statute about how we'll be treating all students that refuse to show ID in an area where you have to show ID. I'd be interested how this discussion would go if instead we were talking about someone having captured video of a person (without ID) who got into a secured part of the campus and assaulted a student. All we'd hear about would be the absent security, and how we're in an "assault society," blah blah. These guys weren't trained right, and should have better known how to handle someone making a stink about carrying the ID needed to use the facility. They blew it, and they get to lose their jobs. In your imaginary, rhetorical "police state," you wouldn't be having this conversation.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I just find a bit sad that an innocent has been shocked five times just so the students can feel safe. That is not security, it just gives you a feeling of security.
I prefer to live free than to be suspected anytime I enter a library, even if the bag next to me might explode in fives mi---Connection reset by peer
What sig ?
Kramer here: he's lucky he ain't Black or I'd have stuck a fork up his ass.
Don't touch them.
Don't mouth off to them
Don't run/resist
Looks like he violated all three to some extent. Unfortunately the kid got what he deserved, maybe a bit too much of what he deserved, but definitely what he deserved.
I'm not saying the library as an entity doesn't have the right to eject, and charge with trespassing, anyone who is there in violation of the rules.
"Eject, and charge with trespassing" does not imply tazering.
The point about privacy rights is that the individual in question was making an effort to protect those rights. Can the library choose to eject persons who choose to exercise those rights? Certainly. Again, though, it's no excuse for this level of response.
"I suggested that one might be able to avoid the charge of assaulting a police officer by pulling the guy who was tased away from the wannabe-fascist cops -- by using the common civil disobedience protest tactic of "de-arresting" someone. You get everyone in the immediate area to put their arms around his body and don't let go, and just drag him away. Make two cops try to arrest a dozen people all holding on to eachother."
That would require two things most (us)americans lack: care about the other, and compromise.
Americans live in fear. Terrorists have won already.
I don't have a sig.
I think it's like they're campus security, but then they went and got themselves deputized as police officers. So the have police powers and can act like police, and do most of the things that you'd expect police can do, but they get paid for and have their equipment provided by (and probably, their area of jurisdiction limited to) the University of California.
It's not uncommon for the 'Campus Security' forces at a lot of state universities to be deputized. The universities want "actual" police protection, as opposed to more powerless rent-a-cops, but the local municipalities don't want to pay for more police officers out of the tax budget, or divert police resources from the rest of the community, so basically the universities run a quasi-private police force.
Arrangements like this are more common than you think. On railroads, the Amtrak Police or other transit police ("bulls") are privately employed, but have police powers within their area of jurisdiction. In California, bus companies can do similar things. (At least they could, a while ago.) In most states, they also have to complete regular police training at the State police academy or pass an equivalency test. WP has an interesting discussion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_police
Basically, the line between 'security officers' and 'police' is blurrier than many people think, and has been for a long time. This isn't a bad thing -- the municipally-employed police don't have the resources to do many of the things that transit/metro/campus police forces do, and it saves a lot of public tax burden as well.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You honestly believe that being tasered 5 times is the appropriate reaction for not producing your papers on demand? Once wouldn't me enough? 6 times is too much? I'm hazy on your logic here... 5 times for not producing papers...what's appropriate for looking at an officer oddly? Or saying something politically incorrect?
I could see the officers escorting him out of the library... I could even see them hauling him down to the police station until they could positively identify him... But getting tasered 5 times for not producing ID? And you think this is appropriate?
What this does is create fear of our authority figures. You better do exactly what they say, when they say it, or you'll get tasered repeatedly. You better not do anything questionable because they can taser you if they feel like it. You know what it's called when you use fear as a tool to achieve your goals? Terrorism.
It isn't in Australia (NSW)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
http://www.crtlesslethal.com/taser-stinger-experim ent.html
Here we go:
Less Lethal Stun Gun Testing:
In 2006 we independently tested TASER X26, TASER M26 and STINGER systems stun guns to determine which was more effective. Watch the following video to find out for yourself:
You know what, this is one time I am proud to be an Indian. If you transpose the same to an Indian school, the cops might have been lynched for touching a student. Terrorism is a ploy, and who the fuck doesn't forget ID's.
Sounds fun and all but, as the great and wise maddox once said:
Civil Disobedience is STILL Disobedience.
There's a UCPD? What the hell kind of a place is this?
I've been to two universities, one in Sweden and one in Germany, both about 70% the size of UCLA -- as many pre-graduate students but fewer post-graduate ones. I've never heard anyone even think the thought that a university would have its own police force!
At student parties we have four student guards trained by the police. Some people feel that this seems a bit over the top, but they're good for checking the student IDs of people entering and once in a while carrying away some unruly guy who had a few drinks too much. Deputy officers in the library? Man, that's just straight out of another planet.
Good catch, thanks for saying it.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Can the last one out of the free world please turn off the lights?
Digg has no good stories any more. Add that to the fact it already had crap for discussions. Quite frankly I hope Digg stays popular though. It seems to draw complete morons away from slashdot a bit.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
You honestly believe that being tasered 5 times is the appropriate reaction for not producing your papers on demand?
You are right. Being tasered 5 times after not showing your papers is NOT the appropriate reaction.
However, that is not the reason he was tased.
After being told to leave, he wasn't making much progress to the door. At this time, one of the guards put his hand on the guys arm, to which the guy responded by yelling at him, falling to the ground, and going completely limp.
There, right there, is where he went from "nuisance" to "potential threat".
Anything security does that this point to remove him forcefully puts them in a vulnerable position. They plead with him to stand up and leave. He refuses. This goes on for a minute or so after which they warn him "Stand up and leave or you will be tasered." He still refuses to comply. At each point, the officers told him exactly what was going to happen and exactly what he needed to do to prevent it. He chose not to.
All he had to do was leave. Instead, he chose to make himself a threat to security and to those students around him.
That is why he was tasered.
If the police have to deal with an angry, shouting person who won't identify themself, show ID, or cooperate... what are they left to do?
I suppose that if tasers had not be invented a shot to the leg would have been called for then right? Certainly picking him up and arresting him for trespassing is out of the question, we cannot have police following police procedure now can we? Maybe a shot to the head would have been preferable, teach those punks standing around a lesson about not complying with the infallible police.
Finkployd
May the Maths Be with you!
First, he didn't get beaten, he got tasered. That's quite different. You can't injure someone in normal health with a taser. It's SUPPOSED to be used on people resisting arrest, which is exactly how it was used. It is far safer than manhandling the suspect, or using batons.
Second, the "privacy" argument is bullshit. If he wanted to stay anonymous for whatever reason, he should have used the library during normal public hours. Otherwise, he should comply with whatever rules they had in place. He does not have a constitutional right to be in the university library at night with no ID. This is trespassing, which is a crime.
Third, he was a whiny, obnoxious bitch, who was trying to cause a scene and incite a crowd. THIS is the reason he got tasered -- he repeatedly refused to follow police instructions and resisted arrest by refusing to get the hell out and whining about the Patriot act. If he quietly complied, none of this would have happened. Police are not supposed to have a lot of patience for this kind of thing. If a cop tells you something and you ignore it, expect consequences.
May cost me karma points but the truth usually does. If he did the same thing in Iran, getting tasered would be the least of his problems. Just changing for the Muslim religion to Christianity gets you the death penalty. The problem with video is that we don't know what happened before the person started recording. To me it sounds as if the guy was a real Dick. Why did he not leave and get his card and return. If you have a gun and the police tell you to drop it and you don't....well expect bad things to happen. Is it racial profiling....could be. Do you expect a black man to be a Ku Klux Klan member? Is that racial profiling. Could it be that he was just a Dick and that is what got him tasered? That is what my money is on.
If this happened to me I would go on TV and say "I was being a big Dick and it was all my fault". Then again I believe in personal responsibility. If this view costs me karma points then so be it.
Seriously, comparing a fry cook's job to a cop's job is just silly.
You are quite correct. A fry cook has no authority over the general population. He is not given powers and privileges far above the common citizen. A fry cook can lash out and abuse his position and the consequences for society are minimal. A law enforcement officer must be held to a much higher standard.
There should be no second chances for a LEO abusing their power or violating the law. Given the responsibility and power we as a society give them, the consequences of them abusing that position of authority and power are severe.
Police put their lives on the line, and for that they should be paid much more and trained much better than they are today. However, that is no excuse for bad behavior, and it should never be tolerated. Every one of the police involved in this debacle need to lose their jobs immediately, they are clearly not responsible enough to hold the position of authority they were given and are much more of a danger to society than a punk kid to wouldn't stand up when told to.
Finkployd
There is much more to the story than posted here. The student purposely tried to "rally" others to protest with him when asked for his ID card. The video does not show the complete picture. While he did not deserve to get treated as harshly as he did, he repeatedly tried to get students to stand up against the police officers and resist.
Again, he did not deserve to get tasered multiple times, but this is NOT the complete picture.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
It would have been interesting to read the official police report and *Then* release the video.
Then the people could see how honest the police are if they think no one saw them.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Tasers are meant to knock people down who are being unruly. Here, they're using tasering as a threat to a person already in a prone position! They don't care that the taser inhibits movement, they only care that it hurts him!
They could have just jumped him and dragged his ass out. Tasers aren't meant to beat people into submission, they're meant to drop an immediate threat, after which they can be handled better.
who's gonna pay for that?
If I saw someone getting tasered for bullshit like this at my college, I'd probably find it hard to stop myself from attacking the cop to help the guy.
Care about privacy? Read this!
Its obvious that only people that fail every single possible subject, or are forced by their parents to become a cop.
Else, a real smart human that knows logic and sense or laws and common sense wouldnt say "get up" after a taser stunt.
hey, where are the old gestapo of the 40s? they hid well, they didnt say "im proud i used to be a gestapo"
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
His parents are Iranian and born in Iran, he is American and born in United States. His own country is USA.
What I can tell from the video is that there was definitely police brutality going on. Actually I can't even understand why they had to touch him in the first place? He was leaving. And I completely don't understand why they had to use tasers. From my experience and from lessons I got in the Finnish army in peace keeping is that when you out number your opponent with 3 to 1, you need only a little force to subdue your opponent. In this case the cops had him in hand cuffs, in that situation one can control easily hand cuffed person and two can move him/her without difficulty. What hear is going is just police brutality and usage of extreme force.
What this video has done, has got me rethinking again of coming to study to US: if this is what is happening, I definitely don't want to step in to american soil. In Europe, especially in Nordic countries, that kind of police work would have led automatically to firing of polices in question and warning notices to all other polices who led the situation happen.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
And killer chances for ad placement!!!
When watching this video Google Ads are offering me:
Stun guns: Free Shipping
Free shipping on all Tasers and Stun
Guns. Great Prices!!
Too bad there isn't an UCLA ad right next to it...
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
Yeah, but here you will have moderated feedback which in my mind is more valuable.
What made it a racist act? because he's not white?
Why didnt he comply with the authority?
I f a police or guard tells you to get out because they cant know if you truly belong where your suppose to be then shit get out or face the consequences.
You have to wonder if we are better off with all these nonlethal torture devices in the hands of The State. .45 with JHP rounds would they have fired? No.
If all the cops had was a
Now think of the US Military. If all they had were ICBMs with Nukes would they be in Iraq? No.
Once you have all these non lethal devices around it *will* be too easy to use them.
You know the saying "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?"
Hmmm.. kid won't leave, looks like a good use for a taser...
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
As far as I can tell, the subject had been subdued. He was sitting on the ground, not attacking the officers. Still they tased him. That's what got the mob forming. The officers were endangering themselves by using excessive violence in a situation like this. Had they just arrested him, cuffed him and dragged him off, most students would have ignored them, but excessive violence like this should get any upstanding citizen to react and to stop it.
The first use could maybe be defended that way, but even that would be shaky. There was no proof that he was an immediate threat, so they have to work for it to be seen as justified. And the 4 subsequent shocks? There's no way to justify them. How the do you expect someone to get up under their own power when you just shot a couple hundred volts of electricity through his nervous system? Screaming like he did was probably about all the motor control he could muster.
As for not complying with the student's request, there wasn't much immediate danger there, either. They were lucky they didn't have a riot on their hands, but it didn't look like one was going to break out. Threatening a bystander was much more likely to spark one than complying with his request.
He's not an innocent. He refused to show ID and refused to leave when asked.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
Do you really think that the obviously absurd expectations and low level of training exhibited by the campus cop(s) involved is an indication of what "police" (as in, "all police") do?
Since we could have heard about this from NY, or FL, or LA, and this particular one just happened to occur on a college campus - Yes, I'd say this does reflect the generally brutish quality of police in general.
Have you suddenly stopped seeing the firing of cops caught doing this sort of thing?
Better question - Have you suddenly started seeing cops fired for shit like this? Departments cover it up as much as possible, the cowards hiding even their names behind their "LEO's Bill of Rights"; When it makes the press, the chiefs talk about investigations and appropriate discipline, then give the offending cops a few weeks of paid vacation.
Rodney King, Humboldt County (Earth First vs Pacific Lumber Co), the present example... And do cops go to prison for grossly abusing their authority? Hell no! Given one cop testifying against two dozen dirty hippies, the courts show just a wee bit of bias there...
how we'll be treating all students that refuse to show ID in an area where you have to show ID.
Trespassing does not negate your basic human rights, nor the responsibility of the police to act humanely and with as little force as the situation requires. Some punk taking a bit longer than they want to pack his books up does not justify tasering.
we were talking about someone having captured video of a person (without ID) who got into a secured part of the campus and assaulted a student.
A college campus doesn't count as a war zone. You don't have a "Green zone" where you only expect to see familiar white faces, and if you want to survive to see tomorrow you must view anyone unfamiliar as carrying a bomb. This didn't happen in Baghdad, it happened on a goddamned American college campus.
Get a sense of scale, here! 9/11 did not change everything, regardless of how those who want an authoritarian government may spin it.
In your imaginary, rhetorical "police state," you wouldn't be having this conversation.
Chinese and Egyptian students keep blogging, regardless of the risk.
But
that
doesn't
happen
here,
right?
Intervening doesn't mean moving directly to the taser which they they did. Its hard to tell from the video but they had at least 3-5 officers there with an individual who wasn't being threatening physically. Intervening at that point is initially having 1 or 2 officers attempt to handcuff him and grab him by the arms and drag him out. They didn't do that. They're trained to handcuff people using passive resistance and laying on the ground.
Next time a cop asks you to move along and you hesitate I hope he blows you away so you get the point of inappropriate response. There were many intervening steps on the force chart (yes police have them) before arriving at tasers. Attempts at physical restraint would have been number one in that situation since he wasn't waving a knife or taking a swing at them. They might have also tried using a pressure point to get him up once they had their hands on him. They're trained to do that too. All appropriate first steps. Its very clear they started tasering though before they even attempted to handcuff him.
Papers, please.
Gee, do you think you could use a German accent when saying that? It's more sinister sounding that way.
Listen, I was at the U of MD in the early 1980's. We weren't allowed to enter the undergrad library without showing our ID. This was to cut down on book theft, and left things like the bathrooms for use by the students (instead of the general public). Do you have a gym membership? Do you think, in a German accent, "your papers, please" whenever you present your ID at that facility? Students pay a lot of tuition to have their school's libraries and other services available to them. Different schools have different policies, but expecting the students to show that they are students is completely reasonable.
A lot of schools also have problems with non-students wandering into dorms, locker rooms, and other spots where some parent may pitch a fit if their 18-year-old freshman daughter was approached by someone who wasn't supposed to be on the campus, or in that building, etc. Typically, the policy is, then: if a campus cop asks you for your student ID while you're in a facility set aside for students, you show it to them. Refusing to, and making a big stink about it isn't helpful, obviously - and just tells the cops that whatever motivated them to think you wouldn't have your school was in fact correct. Of course, if they ask you to leave, and you refuse, you're not helping matters, either. The taser bit wasn't necessary, but neither was telling the cops to pound sand when you don't have the campus's ID to show you're allowed in that building.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
*tasers suspect to disrupt motor functions*
Then yells "stand up or we will disrupt your motor functions again. ??? yes real bright cops
http://www.ucla.edu/bulletin/remarks-nov17presscon f.html
... and here's my favorite:
Short cut from the link above:
UCPD officers became involved after they were asked for help by a community service officer - or CSO -- employed by the library. This is typically the next step in such a situation, since the UCPD officers and our CSOs - which number 123 and are mostly students -- work collaboratively and routinely without incident. A person identified after the incident as a student was repeatedly refusing to comply with the requirement that he show an ID in the library after 11 p.m.
UCPD officers became involved after they were asked for help by a community service officer - or CSO -- employed by the library. This is typically the next step in such a situation, since the UCPD officers and our CSOs - which number 123 and are mostly students -- work collaboratively and routinely without incident. A person identified after the incident as a student was repeatedly refusing to comply with the requirement that he show an ID in the library after 11 p.m.
The student was clearly told by both the community service officer and, subsequently, the UCPD that if he refused to show his ID, he would have to leave the library. When he continued to refuse to do so, officers attempted to escort him out. At this point, the student went limp and, at the same time, encouraged other library patrons to join in his resistance. These actions created an urgent situation in which the officers deemed it necessary to touch the student with a Taser that was set in its "drive stun" capacity in order to gain compliance. He was touched -- not "shot" -- with a Taser, which conveyed an electric current.
Not all the events Tuesday night can be heard or viewed on YouTube...
Apparently there will be an independent investigation, so I'm guessing nothing will happen in the end.
Wait long enough and people forget...
apparently that video followed a ten mile 'chase' where the woman had refused to pull over..
if so, (ten miles?) their actions seem more reasonable doesn't it?
at the end of ten miles, with police lights flashing, I would not expect any outcome other than being under arrest.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Truly, truly disturbing. Saddest part perhaps is that the dozens of students who witnessed it didn't rise up and beat the living shit out of these so-called "cops".
I know that's an unrealistic expectation, but this is simply outrageous. Beyond the pale.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
The officer using the taser was Terrence Duren. He has been accussed multiple times of using excessive force. In 1990 he was accused of choking a student with a nightstick. In 2003 he shot an unarmed homeless man who was allegedly trespassing. Also, he was fired from Long Beach PD prior to working for the UCLA PD. http://civilliberty.about.com/od/historyprofiles/a /uclataser.htm
http://www.bruinwalk.com/groups/DailyBruin/article .asp?articleID=79
No, they did the right thing by simply observing and recording.
Simply put, if they had interjected, the Police would have had a reason and opportunity to turn this into a riot, and flush it all down the memory hole. The guys with cameras? Arrested, and the "evidence" confiscated for the "investigation" of the "riot that evil Iranian Muslim terrorist" caused.
Instead they watched, recorded, and let the police do their bad things all on their own, and the cops will get theirs when the time comes.
Personally, if I was the UCLA students, I'd be carrying a camera everywhere I went from now on. Because if these cops are stupid enough to do this on camera and in front of a crowd, just what do you think they'd do in front of 1 or 2 witnesses in a more questionable situation?
Go and see the video. If THAT is not torture to you, I don't know what could be.
Since the first shot was not on video, only the people present can tell what was going on. But all the other shots were pure sadistic torture.
I hope these assholes get fired, then convicted of aggravated armed assault.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
I hope these cops all lose their jobs, they are obviously not up to the task of controlling anyone.
I don't feel too sorry for the kid though. With any half decent lawyer he is looking at at least a 3-5 million dollar settlement. Hell, I see at least 3 suits here, UCLA itself will be sued, the UCLA campus police, and the LA police (from what I read both police corps were on the scene). He should easily get 1-2 million from each of those institutions, they are all equally culpable. I would be tased 5 times if it meant I never had to work again. This reminds me of Office Space a little bit, when the guy gets hit and gets his 7 figure settlement and says "If you just hold on good things can happen in this life".
Anyway... I don't mean to trivialize this incident, it was horrid, I was appalled watching the video. They've got the guy 5 on 1 and he's on the ground in handcuffs, and they tase him 4 more times because he won't stand up. BECAUSE HE WON'T STAND UP! After being Tased! What is it against the union contract for these cops to lift over 20lbs each? They could have easily picked him up, instead they were lazy assholes and kept tasing away.
On the bright side, the legal system will reward this guy handsomely for his efforts.
When someone is asked by the police to leave and doesn't, what is the appropriate level of response?
Falling to the ground and going completely limp is a threatening action? You sir, are a cum brained fuckwit.
I for one DO NOT welcome our new power-tripping electricity-wielding police-state asshole overlords. Matter of fact, if it'd happened TO ME, I would have made sure an officer involved got the death penalty, in or OUT of court, as the case may be....
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
"To most of the people in that library, the whole thing was just like watching COPS, but in the ultra-ultra high definition sometimes known as Reality(TM)."
Is that better or worse than 1080p? Or can it be upscaled?
The employers seem to have an overly relaxed attitude towards their staff. I wonder how much they let their employees get away with before taking appropriate action.
"You sir, are a shining example of what police SHOULD be. I hope the vast majority are like you"
Assuming it is a real police
"nobody went as far as saying the officers should be fired"
The officers concerned should be fired. Tazers should only be used if their lives are being threatened.
"the proliferation of camera phones is damaging law enforcement and something needs to be done about that..."
No, it's the over reaction of police such as in the above incident that is damaging law enforcement.
was Re:police POV
davecb5620@gmail.com
1) If he wanted help, why not ask for that instead of ranting about the patriot act? He showed where his mind was at.
2) They were not police, they were campos (campus security). Big difference, including training.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While policy/training clearly needs updating, possibly an officer should be fired, it strikes me that University based police force might be an easy target for provocation as they don't deal with serious offenders on a daily basis.
I have zero sympathy for the kid who instigated this event. In no way should he be given a payday for provoking this. I went to university a few years back and anywhere on campus you had to provide your ID when asked by security. This is not an onerous requirement. Nothing to become belligerent about. If anything they should probably ask for ID more often to help the nut cases realize this is nothing to flip out over. A university is not open to any member of the general public, you may at anytime be required to prove you have the right to be there.
This was poorly handled by university cops, who are probably inadequately trained to deal with belligerents. But no permanent harm was done to the instigator (him and his friends no doubt think he is great hero now) and he doesn't deserve a reward for being the asshole that started this.
Diggs threading is also a joke.
/., even if thats what they're gunning for. Actually, I just use an Iframe to display their news using their javascript on my home page. Refreshing that is a LOT faster than going to their home page.
I agree. I think it's because they want to be all "Web 2.0" and have a narrow column for the content with lots of blank space on the sides. With their layout and some of their members, you'd end up with people posting replies that were 1 character wide. I will say the quality of comments has risen tremendously over the last several months. Take that statement however you want.
I do go to digg for the variety and rapid change of their news links. It's not really the same thing as
In this case, since the individual in question is directly observed by an officer committing trespass (typically a misdemeanor without circumstances causing it to be otherwise), the officer had the ability and authority to arrest the individual -- or at least, would in my state; I don't know about the laws where this occurred. Following said arrest, there's potential for both civil and criminal trespassing charges, charges of resisting arrest, etc.
So, answering your question directly: The appropriate response is forceful ejection and arrest. "Arrest", however, should not mean repeated taserings unless the officer has a reasonable belief that such is necessary for his or her safety -- which is clearly not the case in this situation.
"One alarmingly raised the point that the proliferation of camera phones is damaging law enforcement and something needs to be done about that..."
1. Saw something about UK officers deploying their own helmet cameras as to be able to give their own "view" of the situation. They also bought 3 500 copies of Adobe Premiere for all local police districts...
2. Cell-phone cameras will most likely decrease police brutality. To the extent that police brutality is an effective anti-crime measure, it might also be deterimental to law enforcement effectiveness.
and if he'd been shot dead? would that have been appropriate "punishment" to someone for not showing ID? jesus, have some sense of proportion. not pulling out your ID does NOT justify physical violence by two burly officers. would you be this cavalier if it happened to a friend of yours?
"sworn police officers acting totally appropriately."
So you think multiple uses of a taser even after the person is handcuffed is appropriate use of force for someone forgetting their student ID? And threatening to taser bistanders who ask for the cop's badge number?
Wow. Just wow. And you wonder why all of us outside the US look at you like you're monsters. BECAUSE YOU ARE!
-- sudo.ca
The issue isn't that he was being removed by the police, it's that they tasered him 5 times. Apparently he was resisting their instructions to show ID or leave. It then looked like he got combative (the angle in the video is pretty poor). Ok, so they taser him, fair play. But now he's down on the floor in pain, and they keep tasering him telling him to get up. Sure, he's screaming like a crazy person, but he's no longer a danger to anyone (unless you count his politically motivated statements as being dangerous to the state). The nice thing about tasers is that most of the time (provided you didn't kill the guy with it), you can sit down and talk once the person is incapacitated, rather than rush them to an emergency room.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Why was the parent moderated down? It seems to be a trend on Slashdot where petty people with moderation powers moderate down a post they disagree with instead of posting constructive criticism as a reply.
I agree with the parent and I hope that anyone who does not would have the courage to debate the parent instead of trying to censor the opinion.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
Actually, if coached by a lawyer, a motivated student could stage this whole scenario and end up with big money in their pockets. Hummmmmmmm.... makes you wonder who is already milking the system.
...are spoiled idiots. brutality? please. try taking a nightstick to the head. maybe if more of you idiot kids and internet badasses got tased you'd be less likely to grow up to be worthless punks looking for a quick payday at the expense of someone else. i wouldn't be surprised if the student involved didn't set this all up so he could try and get some easy money.
This was not an unsolicited behavior by security, he was the one causing the scene, being disruptive and disobeying authority. If he had is ID everything would have been fine, but he didn't, and he refused to leave. You thing security asked him once and he was on his way out when they decide to stun him? You could tell he was throwing the dramatics out in full force. It was enough yelling and screaming on his part to get students to whip out their video phones, at least.
As Barry Goldwater said, when we speak of freedom, we mean freedom from Government. Yes, things are screwed up here real good, however, as long as we have our guns, we still have the power to take our country back. You can't really have a Police State untill all the guns are confiscated.
Like it or not, we have to comply with our law enforcement officials. If you have been wronged, there is a channel to handle that. Being a dumbass and screaming in a library about abuse of power is not the way. Given the way this happened, the fact that there was some camera phones around, the way he acted, that speech he gave after he was tased...this was nothing more than a setup. I would have tased him in between punches to the face.
Most people abusing their authority will quickly yield if they know someone of higher authority is going to arrive soon. The thought of them being deemed in the wrong usually puts their abuse of authority into perspective, or at least stops it temporarily.
At the point where the students started to form a ring around the cops and started edging in getting more vocal and shouting at them, yes, they had the right to tell them to get back or they would get tazered also. Please will people stop saying he was tazered for not having/showing his ID that has NOTHING to do with this. He was tazered for not leaving when asked and after he became combative and disruptive.
His not having/showing his ID was the beginning of the event, but it was not the cause of the "tazering".
Cops arent salesmen who are there to get you to do something you dont want to do...theyre not selling compliance. Cops are there to enforce the law. There has been entirely too much lenience given to people who dont comply with the law. I personally advocate deadly force to anyone deemed uncooperative.
Laugh while you can, white American.
They come after you next. You can then wonder "What was I doing wrong?"
Examples do not need causation, only opportunity.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I am guessing you have never been shocked to the point of lossing controll, I don't mean touching 110/220V I mean something closer to the 5000V stun guns use.
It is quite the opposite, you are guranteed to injure someone when you use a stun gun. They will feal the effects for days (I have) every muscle in your body will be sore and you will be tired. not so much that you can't walk, but so much you don't want to.
I would much prefer a good beating than a Taz, just because you can't see the after effects doesn't mean they aren't bad, why do you think that is the most commenly used method of torture?
no doubt this guy was being a pain in the ass, and needed a lesson, that is not the police job. But I can gurantee you, quite the opposite of what you think, once you are tazed/shocked, most people just want to lay still and gather themselves, that is why it is used for the purpose of bringing people down, they don't want to get back up no-one would. Thats why it's extreamly important that people who are going to use these weapons first experience them first hand, so they know you can't use them to try and get someone to move.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I got modded funny, but it's actually true.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
So you think multiple uses of a taser even after the person is handcuffed is appropriate use of force for someone forgetting their student ID?
I expected to see police brutality, not a model of LEO restraint and professionalism. If the jackass had left when told, he wouldn't have forced that situation. I was astounded at the restraint the cops showed. In my opinion, once he'd taunted them and refused to walk, they should have hog-tied him and dragged him by the feet face-down out of the building. Three or four marble steps, maybe some textured concrete, and he'd be begging to be allowed to walk. And it wasn't asking for badge numbers that was getting him testy with the jerk poking him in the chest. Any appendage thrust violently at a police officer should come back as a bloody stub. I hope the video can be enhanced enough to prosecute some of that mob.
Just because somebody screams a lot doesn't mean you have to let them have their way. Those students obviously come from backgrounds where screaming got them their way, and to them, refusal to defer to a tantrum is socially unacceptable.
Oh, and near as I can tell, unit3 doesn't speak for most of Canada. All the ones I've met are intelligent, reasonable people with minds of their own. Their government seems an anomaly. It's almost as glaring a contrast as France. As a country, they seem almost entirely worthless, but I've never met a Frenchman I didn't respect. I'm seeing a pattern here. Probably my closest friend is a Sunni muslim Arab. Maybe it's just that the best and brightest from all the world find their way here, which gives me an unrealistically high opinion of mankind in general.
What does this have to do with "White America"?
If the cop was was able to sufficiently disengage from the performance of his primary duties to threaten the bystander, then he certainly had the time to succunctly state his badge number.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
The officers did act professionaly. the guy was just stubborn. How many times do you get shocked before you wise up? what should the cops do?
Oh, im sorry I zaped you 3 times already and you still won't move. I guess I should just let you go so you get your way. Have a nice day.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
Yes, they could have handcuffed him and escorted him out. I think he was doing something wrong but the response was over the top. Does anyone know how it feels to get tasered 5 times? I'm just curious if he actually couldn't get up after being hit that many times. Certainly he was passively resisting them early on but could he have complied near the end?
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Sigh...
For the sake of this argument, we'll assume your account of how this incident started is accurate -- even though he clearly had his books packed up and was reportedly walking towards the door when the police arrived. We'll also treat the first tazing as appropriate, even though it seems it wasn't necessary.
At this point the student is guilty of criminal trespassing, something that can't be waved away if he were to leave now. He has been ordered off the premises and blatantly refused the order.
No he is not. He is entitled to the court system to decide whether or not he is guilty.
You have an unidentified criminal, trespassing on government property, acting violent in the vicinity of young students, resisting arrest, moving in a violent manner. What would you propose, other than using force?
Despite your use of the word 'violence' twice in this description, you cannot honestly tell me that this student was any threat after being tazed. If he was, put handcuffs on him. These officers were clearly using the tazer as a compliance weapon. You know what? Sometimes police work isn't fun. Sometimes police have to be patient and listen to someone saying mean things about them. Tough shit -- do your job properly. Us taxpayers pay their salaries because they do a service to us. When officers break the law because they don't feel they should have to wait or carry someone out of a library, the punishment needs to be harsh. These cops are lazy at best, cowards at worst. Pussies like these have no place in law enforcement.
A white guy was murdered in cold blood by a black police officer on camera and it didn't even make national news. It is only wrong when the victim is a non-white* minority.
Uh, latino guy, he survived, and the police officer is facing assault and attempted manslaughter charges, together worth 35 years in prison. Trial date was set a few weeks ago, and is coming up.
I dunno, I kinda expected them to forcibly remove him. (And probably arrest him, but that still means they need to forcibly remove him.) They could try to carry him, or if he managed to keep that from working through active resistance (not just by going limp), if necessary maybe they could drag him out.
But regardless of what they were trying to accomplish, I don't see why using a taser would be expected to help the situation in any way, at least not after it didn't motivate him the first time. Did they really think the second time might convince him when the first didn't? What about the fifth time when the previous four didn't? It seems pretty clear to me from the number of repetitions that it was violent retaliation on the part of the officers. He was being passive aggressive toward them, sure, but as "peace officers" I think they have responsibility not to allow themselves to be provoked. After it became clear that shocking him wasn't going to get him to do what they said, they were only doing it because they were pissed off.
I'm sure most people understand the feeling -- you feel like you are doing your best to be reasonable, but the other person is doing everything they can to be uncooperative, belligerent, and downright aggravating. You get so frustrated that you really truly feel the urge to punch them, or tackle them, or somehow just do something violent to them, even though violence isn't called for in the situation. I know I've been there. I can imagine it would be very difficult in such circumstances to use non-violent force rather than violent force. Very, very difficult. But that doesn't make it acceptable. If anything, it is because that line can be so difficult not to cross that we should very strongly discipline any officer who uses violent force when there is evidence that non-violent force would have been reasonable.
Parent post made the most important point: The students who were in the library stood there and did nothing. They protested, but only as if they were watching this on YouTube, like the rest of us. Something not right happened -- someone got hurt, and educated college students didn't lift a finger. We question the morals of the police officers because they did, but not the morals of the students who did not.
How about I tase YOU three times and see how fast you get up.
How about I tase YOU three times and see how you act.
He is actually an AMERICAN.
Would you call Michael Jordan an African or specify what country his ancestors came from?
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
How about we tase YOU three or four times. Then tell us how you feel about it.
And if this kid had a heart condition--something that's not at all obvious to the naked eye--he'd probably be dead now. So you advocate the death penalty for people who can't find their government-issued ID? Fascist.
How about we tase YOU three or four times and see how you feel about it?
> If I'm wrong then feel free to tell me how a 120lb policewoman is going to stop a 250lb male mental patient from bashing her senseless simply because she looks like his mother.
"Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! "
Ooh, the irony.
Maybe if they should have broken his kneecaps with their clubs, maybe then he'd wise up and walk away!
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
No- obviously the right thing for the cops to do is to keep tasering him until he dies... Then let the coroner deal with him...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
dude I think you missed the train to digg
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
Because the tasering was easily seen as racist - it was an Iranian-American who was tasered. We whites have less to worry about, but abuse of power is like a weed - it spreads to the pretty places soon enough.
You saw it as racist. I saw it as police enforcing a policy of the campus.
-1 Fascist Pig
It is your fascist attitude which always gets the police in trouble for brutality. Contrary to your fucked up authoritarian ideology, the police are not there to punish people. Dragging someone face down across textured concrete is not appropriate police behavior in a free society. Threatening to electrocute someone in handcuffs who has already been electrocuted multiple times unless they get up from the ground is not appropriate police behavior in a free society. Even a suspected murderer should not be treated this way when arrested by the police, and yet here you advocate that a student who was unable or unwilling to produce his ID while sitting in a library be brutalized more than he was! If you are sitting in a library and someone comes up to you and demands "your papers please!" how would you feel? If you saw this happen to someone, you saw them become upset, and then you saw them grabbed by the police as they left the library, and then you saw them become even more upset and ask the police to get their hands off of them because they are trying to leave, and then you saw the police taser them, and then handcuff them and taser them some more, and then drag them out of the library and taser them some more, what would you do? What would you think if you saw that?
Oh, im sorry I zaped you 3 times already and you still won't move. I guess I should just let you go so you get your way. Have a nice day.
I can't believe how stupid some of you are. Seriously.
1) If 3 officers are incapable of restraining someone who is resisting verbally but isn't even resisting physically, they shouldn't have a job.
2) If 3 officers are unable to carry a guy out of there, they shouldn't have a job.
3) Tasers and other "nonlethal" weapons are meant for self defense against a threat of violence, not for passive (albeit annoying) resistors.
4) Hey, you dumb fucks wondering why he still wouldn't move after the 3rd time -- many people's muscles are immobilized to the point of being unable to walk for about 10 minutes after the first time.
http://www.babysmasher.com
http://www.openingbands.com
I'd like to take a moment and add my perspective to this situation. I've cringed at too many misinformed comments about use-of-force and other police issues to sit idly by and allow FUD to get spread as fact. I am an officer with a large metropolitian police department in the Southeastern United States. As part of my duty gear, I am issued a Taser International X-26 air taser. About one in three of our officers are issued these tasers (or the slightly older M-26 model). Now, I think a lot of people have some misconceptions about the tasers and how they work. Taser International has almost a 100 percent market share when it comes to law enforcement air tasers, so the device the police are using in the YouTube video is probably the same type taser that I am issued. The X-26 is able to shoot two probes connected to the taser by fine wires up to a range of 20-25 feet. The taser is laser-sighted by a laser that is activated when the safety catch is released. One probe is fired straight ahead, while the second has a slight downward trajectory in order to (hopefully) maximaze the distance between the two probes when they hit the target. The current runs between the two probes through the target, so the further apart the two probes are on the subject's body the more major muscle groups are affected by the charge. When the trigger is pulled, the taser produces the 50,000 volt current for 5 seconds. At any time when the current is being generated the safety catch can be used to switch the current off, however our current department training policy is to give the subject the full five seconds every time the taser is deployed. After that, if the subject is still combative, the trigger can again be pulled for another five second burst (and so on). A secondary way to use the taser is the so-called "dry stun". In this method, the catridge at the front of the taser that contains the probes can be removed to allow the taser to be used as a "stun gun" for a press-contact discharge onto the subject. This method would be utilized if the probes from the first shot missed or malfunctioned. Now, what some Slashdotter may find shocking (pun intended), is that the deployment of the taser falls into the use of force continuum right above verbal commands (the same as OC or pepper spray, or using soft, empty hands to subdue to suspect: e.g. 'habeus grabus'). In the context of the YouTube video, the subject was obviously guilty of disorderly conduct (at least per Georgia law) and ANY non-compliance by the suspect after the officers decided to place him under arrest justifies the use of the taser. There is no reason an officer needs to risk injury to himself or the susect when the taser can be used to harmlessly end the confrontation. It doesn't matter that the suspect was "trying to leave". You can't break the law, CONTINUE to break the law once the police arrive, and then just decide to leave and think that you are immune to the legal repercussions of your own actions. Just to be clear: it is my opinion that the FIRST use of the taser by the police in this situation was entirely justified. The suspect was resisting arrest by being both physically and verbally non-compliant with the officer's commands, and the deployment of the taser was justified in such a situation. I'm going to reserve comment on any further use of the taser shown in the video until more information is available. Are there situations where it would be necessary to taser someone that is handcuffed? Yes, but there had better be some pretty extreme circumstances to justify such behavior.
Remember, you only got to see a tiny piece of the situation, and not even very well at that.
After reading some accounts like this one, it seems pretty clear that tasing the guy once was justified. Tasing him again while in handcuffs, of course, was unjustified.
Another eyewitness said that the officers had already tried unsuccessfully to restrain him with compliance holds before using his taser. I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason why the first taser use was excessive given the background information. Again, tasing a restrained, unarmed person is never justified.Regarding threatening to tase a mob participant while the officers were in the process of subduing a belligerent person, it may have come out poorly, but that was not the time or place to demand a badge number. Wait until the officers have the situation under control, and then you can ask for whatever number you want. Heck, if you wait a few hours, you can go read the arrest report and get every detail down to the serial numbers of the tasers fired.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I watched the video. You could barely see the begining of the incident. You could hear some of it.
Before anyone bitches one way or the other, I have something to ask.
Have any of you been tazered?
I have. Not as a result of a crime, but during training to know what it feels like.
After being tazered once, I had to have someone help me up. This was at a time when
I was young and physically fit. When you tazer someone, they are not always going to
"get up" under their own power. I keep thinking in my head "If you want him to get out
after the first taze you will need to move him. Duh."
Being tazed for a no show on ID is a little extreme, but he did continued to be uncooperative.
As a security officer (I'm not talking real law enforcement), you usually give your badge number if someone has a complaint.
I'm kinda surprised the mob didn't rush them. When they started going too far.
They were not going "downtown", these are campus police. Nor was he arrested (at least at that point), and from what I can tell of the shaky video he was very actively non-cooperative, which IS reason enough to use a taser.
There are enough varying accounts of what happened that I cannot say what we saw (which was really very little) was justified or not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Another punk kid who thinks he is above the rules, gets tasered and everyone cries for him. SCREW HIM. He's just another idiot from another country who comes along and thinks he is above the rules. If you don't like this country, get the H**L out! Bunch of socialist screwballs have really screwed up this country. We have to be "politically correct". Well screw that! If you screw up, expect to be thumped! Ok, start your flame war......I really don't give a d**n what you think!
I dunno. Maybe arrest him, bring him to the station, charge him with disorderly conduct, and tell him that if he causes trouble like that again, he's gonna spend a few days in jail? I know, it's a little bit "out there," but I really think this strategy could work.
That is precisely what the officers were trying to do, but the suspect refused to comply, resisted arrest, screamed explatives. This was after he was asked to leave by library staff, campus security (unarmed students) and finally by the University of California police.
It is not like 4 police officers showed up, demanded to see ID and when he didn't produce any, tased him. This incident took place ver a period of minutes and every point of escalation was controlled by the student who refused to comply. As a kicker, it looks like the student who got tased has been seeking to pick a fight with authorities (which one can already figure out by his screaming about the PATRIOT act).
The university's employees mishandled the situation from the start. Had the CSO responded to Mostafa's refusal by calmly announcing that he would check the IDs of everyone in the area:
* The surrounding students would have been mildly irritated
* Mostafa would have probably ended up feeling pretty silly had they unceremoniously presented their IDs, and either presented his own (if he had it) or left quickly (partly because he'd feel the angry vibe from the others who were ID'ed as well due to his complaining). By standing his ground and demanding to see ONLY Mostafa's ID, the CSO did a wonderful job of validating and reinforcing the beliefs of Mostafa and every other student on campus who thinks they're being unfairly picked on.
* Or, alternatively, the CSO could have asked for the IDs of only the students vouching for Mostafa's status as a student.
Either way, the policy's goal would be achieved: giving police an excuse to kick homeless people out of the library who'd otherwise sleep there overnight. Of course, braindamaged antisocial bullies for whom rulebooks are the equivalent of softcore porn will bitch... but they're kind of like diehard fundies whose own words do a better job of making them look like complete tools with stakes up their butts than anyone else's writings possibly could.
Another example of incompetence and stupidity: the first actual police officer to encounter Mostafa apparently proceeded straight to the "grab him and drag him out" strategy, as opposed to looking straight at him (while maintaining a nonthreatening, respectful distance) and calmly informing him in a "look, I really don't want to do this, but..." tone of voice that he WOULD be forcibly removed if he didn't leave voluntarily, and that if he were subject to forcible removal and resisted, he could be tased and/or subject to real, honest-to-god arrest... something that might very well have not occurred to him up to that point.
God knows, if I were pissed and embarrassed about having been singled-out for an ID check (or believed myself to have been), threw in the towel & conceded defeat by heading towards the door, and THEN had a cop grab my arm so he could bully me some more and rub some more salt into the wounds... yeah, I'd have probably reflexively tried pushing him away and had some angry words for him too.
did you watch the video? they *randomly* grabbed the guy as he was leaving the building. they zapped him, then zapped him again when he would not stand up. the point of tasers is that they incapacitate the person for a bit of time. you are not supposed to zap somebody to get their attention. you zap them to knock them down. to then zap them again because they can't hop up and comply is crap. those cops/guards should know that. real police use them to knock somebody out of commission enough that they can cuff them or put them in a car or whatever.
i realize we do not see what precedes the situation, but after they start zapping the guy they can not expect him to just hop up and be docile. they also had a crapload of cops around an unarmed student. they could have just as easily picked him up or something if that was a concern. they obviously were not worried about his safety by zapping him 5 times in that few minute span. there is no reason they could not restrain him some other way if they really felt it was that important.
being a cop/guard on a college campus means you signed up to deal with potentially obnoxious students. it might be rough, but how could you not realize that was going to happen? i can't imagine a situation where some rude student that did not have his ID deserved that kind of battery.
How about we tase YOU three or four times. Then tell us how you feel about it.
If you'd read the post, you'd know that the GP was saying that this kid got tased for not complying and being a general dick. Then the GP said that he would have complied before the first tasing so it would have never gotten to that point.
Please, read the post and reply appropriately.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
No, the key message here was "we want you out of the library".
The police were called by the library. The police were acting in accordance with the library's wishes. The police didn't just show up for no reason and taser the guy. The message from the library was "we want you out of the library". The message that the library gave to the police was "we want this guy out of the library".
The guy should have left when he was asked to leave. There should have never been a reason for the library to have to call the police. He should been long gone before the police got there.
The library was not his home, he had no right to stay after being identified as an unauthorized visitor and being asked to leave. The library has a right to control the who uses its facilities.
I've already posted something similar to this in response to some other moron in this story, but this is yet another reason I'm ashamed of my country.
No, not so much because of the police brutality. That's to be expected any time you get someone with a controlling personality coupled with an inferiority complex in a position of authority. The system is supposed to be able to handle these troglodites and get rid of them.
What I'm ashamed me is the number of people defending these thugs' actions. They are effectively breaking our immune system to these things. There is absolutely no conceivable justification for repeatedly shocking someone who is clearly not a threat to anyone. I don't care what he yelled at the police (I'd be yelling at them too in this situation), I don't care that he wasn't leaving as quickly as the officers wanted him to. I don't care that he was "guilty" of criminal trespass. The use of a taser was not an acceptable response!
If you believe that their actions made that library a safer place, or that the student deserved what he got, please move somewhere that already has a police state. Or, alternatively, seek euthanasia. The United States of America and the ideal of individual liberty can't afford any more of you sheep fucking everything up.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Last I heard, you could not [legally] be arrested for failing to show ID.
Is that no longer true? No matter how you look at this, this guy has a great case.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So you advocate the death penalty for people who can't find their government-issued ID? Fascist.
I think you fail to understand that this is a University... now it is a government run university but it does have posted rules.
Most universities have ID's issued to students for a variety of reasons. I went to a private one, and only students were allowed in the library after 9pm... much like other posters have cited Powell library being closed to the public after 10pm.
I wouldn't say that the library is private property, but the university can make whatever rules it wants for the buildings on its property.
- "Never let a computer tell me shit." - DelTron Zero
The proper response to police brutality is to go get some masks on, come back, and beat the living fuck out of the police. There is no excuse for it. Period. The frustration of the job doesn't come close. Those students DID do wrong by "thrusting appendages" at the cops, but only because they didn't have a knife or a blunt instrument in their hand.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Have you suddenly found that your local municipality's laws have changed?"
What, like the fact I can't protest (even peacefully) where I like, my freedom of speech is restricted, I can be detained indefinitely on the mere suspicion of terrorism, my calls can be traffic-analysed or intercepted without a warrant, even a retroactive one, my library and ISP records can be taken by law enforcement and it's illegal for me to even be notified, etc, etc, etc?
No, no, none of that here.
"Have you suddenly stopped seeing the firing of cops caught doing this sort of thing?"
No. But it's happening a lot more, and I haven't seen a huge upswing in firings or imprisonments for abuse of power, either.
Fuck it - the fucking president's leading the way and you don't see a trend?
"In a "police state," this is policy, not a much-yelled-about, firing/arresting event."
Again, no policies about this, nosireebob. And certainly no secret detention camps, warrantless domestic surveillance or directives to place peaceful anti-war protesters on terrorist watch-lists...
"Your question is no different than asking whether or not, since some airline pilot was caught heading to work under the influence, we're in a "drunk pilot state." There are also badly broken people in other professional roles... I'm sure you've heard some stories. Does that mean we're in a "rapist dentist state?""
It depends - is the current administration leading the way by example, and positively encouraging the circumvention of anti-dentist anti-rapist rules and procedures?
"What we are in is a "hyper extrapolation state," where the incorrect actions of 1/100,000,000 people is discussed here as if congress had just passed some new statute about how we'll be treating all students that refuse to show ID in an area where you have to show ID."
No, what we have here are ever-increasing indicators of a society-wide trend away from essential civil liberties towards the illusion of a little temporary safety.
There's quite a famous quote about it you might perhaps have seen somewhere before.
"These guys weren't trained right, and should have better known how to handle someone making a stink about carrying the ID needed to use the facility. They blew it, and they get to lose their jobs. In your imaginary, rhetorical "police state," you wouldn't be having this conversation."
Nobody ever achieved a police state in one night.
You need years and years of gutting of due process, removal of checks and balances, a complient media, relaxation on proscriptions against domestic surveillance and torture, a removal of the assumption of innocence... oh, wait-
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Sorry, I can't reach the light switch, my restraints are getting a bit in the way.
MABASPLOOM!
Lots of college students are uppity assholes. But I could give two shits what happens in some other fucked up country, if we are a free society electrocuting a student 5 times for being a pain the the ass is totally out of line.
You go piss on an electric fence, come back and tell me you've never been a dick and you'd probably be a better person if you were humiliated and electrocuted if you ever were.
The guy was trying to leave. The police threatened the other students, wouldn't provide their badge numbers and continued to shock the student even as the surrounding students protested. There were witnesses and they didn't look like hippie-lefties.
Your cavalier attitude would be alarming were it not so common.
Quack, quack.
Their presence wasn't logged - the ID was shown at the door to ensure that only students were admitted to the all-hours facility.
So how the fuck did the student get in? He was already down, at a computer, with books. If ID is required to be shown at the door for entry, why would he be caught LEAVING the building to begin with, unless he had already shown his ID and was granted entry?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Thanks good summary.
Ignore the cowardly AC.
Five times may have been excessive- once certainly wasn't.
As you say- wrestling the guy from the ground puts the officers in danger and he had plenty of warning to stand and leave the area before they tasered him.
Seriously tho after one taser, they should cuff him while he is incapacitated so they don't have to hit him more. Tasering that many times does start to look like torture.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
While you might initially feel that taking the action you describe would somehow satisfy your personal sense of "justice," (I have definitely felt similar urges in the past) I think you'd benefit from some reflection upon the words of a man who has seen what violence does and does not achieve:
"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government."
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." - Martin Luther King
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
What the fuck kind of reasoning is this? Making a scene is not an arrestable offense. Being rude, loud and obnoxious is not an arrestable offense. Bring up the Patriot Act while you're being tortured/arrested is not a taze-able offense. What the hell is wrong with you people?
The cops were clearly out of line. This is NO excuse for tasering a handcuffed person. NONE. All of you authority-worshiping psychopaths who are justifying the cops' actions need to look deep inside yourselves. Is this the kind of country you want to live in? Where people who step out of line (a trivial offense - not having an ID card after hours) deserve to be tasered repeatedly? If that's the kind of law&order country you want to live in, I suggest moving to North Korea where the officers don't have to worry about any pesky civil liberties getting in the way of things. Much more efficient that way.
Personally, I'll take an inefficient democracy over an efficient fascist government any day of the week. We must accept certain limitations when we embrace freedom. One of those is the right of others to behave in a way we don't like. The whole point of freedom is giving others a wide degree of latitude as to how they act.
Please don't respond with any diatribes beginning like this: "but, but, he broke THE LAW!!" No, he violated school policy, which shifted under his feet. He felt he was being racially profiled. Besides, there are so many laws on the books that it's almost impossible not to violate one per day (which is part of the creeping fascism reflected in this video). I bet almost every person here has broken a law today. Did you speed on the way to work? Download a song/movie? Did you make a complete stop at that stop sign? Well, I guess we should all be tasered repeatedly since that's how we're handling problems now.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but what happened to talking to a person (note, I didn't call him a "perp", a "suspect", a "criminal" or a "foreigner"), instead laying hands on him right away? These cops used tasers because their brains weren't up to the task. They used a taser for their convenience, rather than for our safety. This should have been a non-event. Kid makes big stink. Cops ask him to run home and fetch his ID. End of story. Instead, Officer Idiot decides he needs to be a Big Man and manhandle this kid. The kid isn't having it, so Officer Idiot whips out his taser to compensate for his tiny penis. Then he threatens to taser anybody who asks for his badge number. That is ASSAULT.
These fucking cops should be sitting in a jail cell right now. How can you defend these scumbags?
More rantings/info on my blog. Please don't taser me if you disagree with my opinions.
Electric Monkey Pants
Your conclusion is that because the cops and various students were telling him to get up, that he could get up?
You are a mental midget with the IQ of a fencepost. I wish people like you would leave, you're bringing down the median IQ on slashdot.
Well, let's handcuff and taser you and see how much you yell and scream.
Asshole.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Feel free to do a search if you'd like ... there were kuroshin beggars out in droves about 1.5 years ago. Sounding pretty much exactly like the digg people do now. It's a bad sign for digg.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Well let's see now. George W. Bush was elected 2 times. CondaNAZI Rice... errr... I meant Condoleezza REICH using one threat after another when dealing with foreign issues? The Patriot Act? So let's defend freedom by removing freedom... does that even make sense? Then you're surprised when issues like that start popping up more and more?
The state is encouraging it... think about it.
It's not the destination that matters, but rather the journey.
It depends on the level of resistance, which in his case was entirely passive. The appropriate response when dealing with a passively resisting subject is nonviolent.
Tasering someone five times is violent.
This was completely inappropriate use of force, but no one is surprised, since it's in LA.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The second this torture was identified by the students, they should've KNOWN that the "police" were violating the law - thus imediately asubject to arrest, themselves. Why the hell didn't the mass group of students subdue these campus cops? I thought UofC had a decent law degree, FFS. Were I one of those students hearing "I have a medical condition" and seeing a multiple taser usage after being subdued from the first taser shot, it'd have been one clothesline, with a knife-edge strike, directly to the throat, in defense of another person's life in direct response to violation of the law (the easiest violation to name being the 'cops' refusal to produce badges and IDs when asked to do so.)
Mod me troll all you want - I'd love to hear what the NewYorkCountyLawyer would say to my response, there. At least let a lawyer with knowledge tell me I'm wrong before you mod me down.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I would fully agree with you, but how do you know this guy is innocent? Living on a college campus I can tell you there are a lot of crazy people around. If a person in a student area doesn't have proof of being a student and doesn't immediately leave when asked then I, as a student, would want them removed - forcefully if necessary. That is one of the benefits of using university libraries instead of municipal libraries, and one of the benefits of a university dorm over an apartment complex. Being on a campus where I saw programs like this put into place I can tell you it is not just a feeling of security - most crimes on campus are committed by non-students and incidences of assault in the dorms have dropped greatly since ID was mandatory to enter the dorms after 9 pm.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
You do not know what the fuck you are talking about. You should have just stopped there. A google search for "taser injury" provides TONS of examples.
But not on people who are passively resisting arrest. A cop who relies on the taser is like a garbageman who is too much of a pussy to pick up a 50 pound can of trash and can't do his job without the hydraulic arm. Maybe they should just fucking stay home if they don't want to work.
The proper response to someone passively resisting arrest, which means they're just lying there and not doing what you tell them, is to cuff them so they can't suddenly fight you, and carry them away. Shocking someone repeatedly with a taser, which often renders people unable to stand, and then shouting at them to stand, and then shocking them again is not an appropriate response. This is a clear-cut case of police brutality.
In California, you're not trespassing until you are asked to leave and decline. It is not clear from the video that this is what happened. The claim is that he failed to show ID. If you are in a place, and you are asked to leave, and you are leaving (which counts picking up stuff and packing it up in preparation for departure) then you are not trespassing by California State Law. Failing to show ID is not a crime.
Even if he was trespassing, the proper thing to do is to arrest him for it, and then use necessary force to secure the suspect. Which is not what happened. Again, you don't know what the hell you're talking about, so why are you bothering?
Whining? Sounds more like he was screaming in pain to me. But let's taser you a few times, and see how YOU feel. I think it would do you some good.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe we should hit you with a taser a few times and see how easy it is for you to get up and walk while handcuffed.
Police Brutality, case closed. The student was 100% a dick, but they should have just carried him out after the first taze.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
LAPD are having a pretty bad time and I have *no* idea what it must be like working in the Los Angeles area. I saw the video and it was hard to shake. Kind of disheartening. The kid had no weapon, was never considered a serious threat, appeared to be incapacitated while trying to comply and was surrounded by frightened and outraged students who the police also threatened. Makes you wonder what happens when civil disobedience can be nullified with none lethal violence. Who will speak up? Someone should have intervened *peacefully* much sooner. Hell, drag the kid out yourself. But of course they would have been tased too.
Quack, quack.
I think it really depends on the taser. I have been hit by one that knocked my wind out and knocked me down, but I still would have been able to get up (or at least make an effort to) in about a minute or two. I have also been hit by one that left me standing, but sure as hell not wanting to get shocked again (that one was one that sent too cords out and actually stuck into my skin).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
The US military did not execute dozens of kids at Kent State. It was the Ohio national guard, and they only killed four.
And those four probably deserved it, because they were questioning the authority of the US President (may God bless him and guide his every move). That makes 'em pinko commie hippie Ruskii-lovers in my book. They probably killed and ate babies. If they were in Iran, they wouldn't've even had the right to protest-- they would've gotten a lot worse than killed, let me assure you.
So let's not exaggerate.
(This shouldn't be necessary, but DISCLAIMER: post drips with irony. Handle with proper protective gear.)
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Reading these replies I have noticed a trend of assuming the best of this individual and the worst of the officers and campus police involved. Let us, however, look at this from another, different, perspective.
First off, we do not know what led up to this gentleman being asked to leave. Another poster mentioned that the school was enforcing ID checks because sexual assaults had occurred on the premises. Also, for the sake of argument, let us assume that he was acting suspiciously which led to his ID check and the consequent request to leave.
The campus police for whatever reason were unable to get this gentleman to leave, further evidence that he was acting irrationally and suspiciously, and they were forced to call the UCPD. Let us also assume that, had he wanted to leave, he could have left any time before the police arrived.
When the UCPD arrived to assist the campus police they arrived to a situation where there was an irrationally acting individual under very suspicious circumstances. I don't know police protocol, but I imagine if they are called out, they have to file a report, get a name, see ID, whatnot. You can imagine that if he is in a hurry to leave once the police do arrive would only heighten their suspicions. It isn't hard to see that how they may think that he is the sexual predator who had been stalking the area, especially if he wants to leave without showing ID or identifying himself.
We don't know why the first tasing occurred, but again for the sake of argument, let us assume that this suspicious irrationally acting individual did something else stupid, like tried to push past one of the police officers to leave or possibly it looked like he was going to assault one of the officers or something else that warranted the use of the taser. Incidentally I have been hit with a taser before, it was brief and hurt like hell, but I was able to function immediately afterwards. I will note that I have never been hit multiple times or by a long extended shock.
Now let us assume that the people using the tasers have been trained in their use and how long of a shock to give someone without immobilizing them beyond the length of the shock.
We can't exactly see what is happening from the video, but we can hear him shouting about the patriot act and we can hear the officers telling him to get up. Now let us assume that he struggling against the police, not a difficult assumption to make, if you see the other irrational decisions he made and continued to make. He obviously was not subdued by the police and wanted to act in a manner to intensify the situation. He could very easily have kicked/kicked at one of the officers which resulted in the extra tasings. We just don't know.
We know he went limp so the police would have to carry him out. You would have to assume that the officers could be highly suspicious of this possible ploy to get them in close so he could bite them since they knew he was perfectly capable of walking.
Obviously a lot of this is conjecture, much like the arguments against the police officers who are apparently guilty until proven innocent. The truth in the matter is that none of us were there. As horrific as it appears, and as everyone here is apparently an expert on tasers and there usages, it still is unfair to judge so harshly until all the facts come to light. To do otherwise would be irresponsible.
Finally, perhaps everything that happened was the result of a culture difference. I have read that he was Iranian. Perhaps in Iran people are encouraged to stand up to authority and speak your mind regardless of the consequences and he just didn't realize that when you do that to the police in America they can take it badly.
Right, because I usually feel very threatened by people who go completely limp. I'm terrified! They might, like, lay on my foot and make me unable to move! They could shit themselves and then I'd have to smell them! OH THE TERROR!@#!@#!#!
Let me help you with something; going limp when you are assaulted is not a threat. It is called passive resistance and it is called this because it is resistance which is passive. I know this is overly simplistic but you are clearly a fucking idiot so I am trying to make this as simple as possible. Let me make this clear to you: the officer commited an act of assault, punishable by a court of law, when he grabbed the guy's arm. Any citizen, whether a member of the police force or not, is assaulting any individual that they touch without permission. Now, if the officer had been placing him under arrest, then he would have had the right to use necessary force to subdue him, just as I would if I were placing you under citizen's arrest.
However, lying limply on the ground is by definition "subdued". The student was offering no violent resistance at all. He was in fact doing exactly what he should be doing when illegally assaulted by police. (Assault is a crime, so that was a redundant statement, but again, I wanted to make things very simple, in deference to you.) Did you see videos of what happened to protesting students at UC Berkeley in the sixties? They were dragged down steps on their asses. Even they were at least simply removed from the buildings instead of being repeatedly assaulted.
What makes you think the cops have the right to do that? It's unnecessary force. He was not acting in a violent manner whatsoever.
Yes, he laid down on the ground when he was assaulted, and that made him a threat. And maybe winged primates will aviate from my fucking rectal cavity.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What was the kid arrested for?
I see no mention of a criminal trespass arrest....
there is only the mention of resisting arrest.
In court it is pretty impossible to win (for the police) if the kid is not in the process of being arrested for anything while he resists.
A simple charge of resisting arrest will never cut it, because the kid was NOT ARRESTED FOR ANYTHING ELSE. THERE WAS NO BASIS TO ARREST HIM.
The record will show that I am correct in this matter if the kid gets a compitent lawyer.
Cops sometimes over-react with belligerent idiots. Film at youtube. Lots of quacking.
Dear Idiot:
The cops are not your parents. You are not a snowflake. Get over it.
Dear Cops:
1) You screwed up. 2) If we see you, we can film you.
From the video the jerk is yelling at the police before they taser him. They tried to escort him out after repeated commands to leave. He decides to be stupid and resist. Seems perfectly justifiable to me -- he should be happy is does not live in Iran.
It was on a university campus, which I don't believe is considered to be a public place. I think if you review the University's regulations, you'll see that students must present their student identification on demand. In this case, I'm guessing the student was arrested for trespassing. Now, I'm sure that charge will have to be dropped once the police get comfirmation he is indeed a student. Unfortunately, he might face additional charges in front of some sort of student review board.
would much prefer a good beating than a Taz, just because you can't see the after effects doesn't mean they aren't bad
You have obviously not ever had a good beating. Having it physically hurt to walk, not see out of your right eye, and have dreadful pain in your right ear for a week is a lot worse then feeling fatigued.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
I really think anyone in law enforcement needs to be held accountable. A zero-tolerance policy. If there is any evidence that the behavior of an officer is not in line with his duties (such as with brutality), then all duties should be revoked, all benefits ended, pay terminated, and all ties cut.
It is the job of an officer to carry out the enforcement of the letter of the law, is it not? It is his job to ensure that the law is being obeyed. So, if he disobeys that law, then the law should be even less lenient to him than to the common citizen. Taken to the logical extreme: If a police officer kills an innocent man under any circumstances - then the fullest extent of the punishment for such a crime should be carried out.
Too many police officers believe themselves to be above law. They need a deterrent far stronger than those over whom they enforce it.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Boing boing has some background on one of the kids attackers. apparently he was dismissed from the real police force for shooting an unarmed homeless man he was recommended to be dismissed from the UCLA for previously choking a student. http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/21/ulca_tasercop _has_a_.html
The Las Vega police describe it as:
Sounds more like he was trying to hurt him in order to get him to cooperate.
Quack, quack.
>I just saw the video. That kid was being a total ass. You couldn't count the number of times >security was telling him to get up. He didn't, not becuase he couldn't. He just did not because >that was his choice. You could even hear other students in the background yelling at him to "just >get up!"
duh, the *whole point* of the taser is to INCAPACITATE you. So the cops can then go in and cuff him and put him in a squad car. You talk about it like hes just stunned. My buddy is a cop and as part of his training he had to get tased. The way he described it, it's next to impossible to have any sort of motor coordination for the next 15 minutes. So to say it was "his choice" to not cooperate after being tased is incredibly retarded.
>This was not an unsolicited behavior by security, he was the one causing the scene, being >disruptive and disobeying authority. If he had is ID everything would have been fine, but he >didn't, and he refused to leave. You thing security asked him once and he was on his way out when >they decide to stun him?
did you watch the video? he was halfway out the door when he got tased and screaming "I said I would leave!"
>You could tell he was throwing the dramatics out in full force. It was enough yelling and >screaming on his part to get students to whip out their video phones, at least.
If excessive force was being used on me, I would make sure everyone in earshot was aware too. If these things don't get documented, the cops always win.
Yes, I do, since his response to the officer assaulting him by grabbing his arm (which is illegal and inappropriate outside of an arrest) was to go completely limp.
Attracting attention is his prerogative. Certainly, once I got tasered, I would do all I could to attract as much attention as possible, in the hopes that someone would record the event, so that I could get the footage on the internet, and gain some support from the public... well, the part of the public that, unlike you, is opposed to police brutality.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
>I would fully agree with you, but how do you know this guy is innocent?
Last I checked, it was innocent until proven guilty.
Didn't see this in the video.
This reminds me of an attorney I once knew who worked as a prosecutor for a major U.S. city. The city included several universities, and whenever one of the university police forces turned over a case to her there was a far higher than average chance she would have to drop it because of the lack of professionalism of the police. Generally it was because proper procedures were not followed, so evidence was either (a) missing or (b) inadmissible in court, though I do seem to recall her mentioning a case where someone was arrested for doing something perfectly legal. I can't recall any stories of gross misconduct like this one, though.
Like the officers didn't cause a bigger scene by choosing that course of action. Oh, and they didn't need the student's help in looking bad, judging from the outrage exibited by the bystanders.
But that is besides the point because this was not a criminal, just a PITA university student. He wasn't resisting arrest because he wasn't arrested and charged until after the incident.
"I forgot my mantra."
The fact that people can't tell ironic dialogue from a troll is the greatest argument for moving slashdot back to the model where only a "trusted few" are allowed to moderate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
His parents are Iranian, but he was born and raised in the US. Further, even in America you are free to speak your mind to the police - and if they retaliate physically then that's police brutality. As long as you both do not escalate the use of force yourself and do not actively resist (going limp does not count) then the police are not supposed to escalate the situation themselves, much less go straight to the taser.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
The event of the UTube posting of the tazering of the brown-skinned student at the UCLA Library may or may not signal the end of freedom. It does, however, signal the end of both the paper press and television news!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
funny, I thought people in the US are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers. guess I must have been thinking of some other country
Mmm hmmm. Agreed. Maybe the police missed their Substantive Justice class. Or maybe it was the Process of Law class.
Well, my point is really that you have to stop them in the act. We let cops get away with all kinds of shit and we know they're not going to get what they deserve in court. "Oh, it's a difficult, stressful job, you have to expect these things." But you're right, vengeance is not the answer. However, preventing the police brutality is the answer. Rather than beating them up (which I admit was a spur-of-the-moment thing to say) we should be subduing them as nonviolently as possible, then wrapping them in duct tape and delivering them to the police. However, that's likely to get you locked up, which is probably why I suggested just the beatings. :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A university regulation does not permit the cops to arrest someone for not showing their university ID, though; only to remove them from the premises for trespassing. Furthermore, all of the assaults (grabbing his arm and tasering him) occured prior to his being placed under arrest (or so we are told.)
Nothing like the charges that these officers will hopefully face for their role in his abuse...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Right, but regardless of the rules, tazering someone 5 times is excessive in almost any circumstance (unless, for instance, the dude is seriously pumped on stimulants and the size of an elephant), and especially in this particular case, where the dude did not pose a threat, and was definitely not a threat after the first, or second, or third time he was tasered. The rules in this situation are totally moot, this is an issue of proportional response.
There are lives at stake here!
This is really very simple, the officers involved in this incident will continue to be police officers, they might lose some pay or they might be put on paid leave, basically paid vacation, for a while. The lawsuit against the department, if there is one, will amount to nothing. The officers' actions here are way over the line even if I do think the guy who got tasered was an idiot for back talking to them. This is not a country where you backtalk to police, it's a good way to end up beat to crap or dead. I say this as a person who is friends with a handful of the police in the city I live in and someone who has nothing against police in general, I have just seen their work good and bad. For a variety off reasons this is the country we live in right now, less privacy, more authority over people by police, military forces and other groups that fall under the "security" label. It is going to get worse before it gets better, Unless you have a lot of money, good political connections or both, when the police, the TSA or anyone else in authority asks you something, no matter how dumb, smile, show your ID, and do it unless you want to end up like this guy or worse. The people in authority don't care what you think, or what you think your rights are, and our nation is letting them get away with it a little more each day. Makes me glad I am white, registered republican and a member of the local megachurch, these things make me no better or worse than anyone else, but they are handy for getting along here in the Midwest.
So finally, after 1233 inane messages, the LA Times introduces some reality - and some new unreality - into the discussion.
We have a police officer with a past history of problems with violence (and who is himself a minority) carrying a taser because the university was concerned with his use of a nightstick on one person and his use of a gun in the shooting of a homeless man.
The facts may be subject to more endless debate, but the LA Times report says that he was suspended for 90 days for the incident where he used the nightstick to choke someone who was hanging out on the street in front of a fraternity house.
You could make a reasonable hypothesis that tasers were purchased at UCLA because someone was concerned about the use of guns and nightsticks by their police.
"Tabatabainejad's attorney, Stephen Yagman, said his client was shocked five times with the Taser after he refused to show his ID because he thought he was being singled out for his Middle Eastern appearance". (Remember that the officer with the Taser was NOT the person who originally asked for ID and who then called the police.)
Considering the rampant paranoia throughout our society, there are any number of American citizens of middle-eastern decent who probably feel degraded and threatened. (Among other incidents, they threw a couple of Hindus off an airplane because other passengers were frightened by their appearance.)
It may not excuse acting like an asshole, but it does sort of explain it.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
I think this was pretty reprehensible.
Quack, quack.
From what I can see on the video that kid was asking for trouble. He deserved all he got.
He had plenty of warnings and chose to ignore them and to be non-cooperative.
Tasers and other "nonlethal" weapons are meant for self defense against a threat of violence, not for passive (albeit annoying) resistors
While I agree that this episode is a pretty clear example of excessive force, the above statement is not accurate. Although my department doesn't use tasers, I presume that the courts consider tasers as occupying the same rung in the ladder of escalating force guidelines as pepper spray. Police officers (I am one) are trained to use non-lethal force options such as these when the arrestee is actively resisting but not threatening violence. Examples of active resistance include fleeing, attempting to break free from a compliance hold, etc. If the officer were actually be threatened with bodily harm, the guidelines stipulate that he should escalate to the baton (as long as the suspect is not himself armed).
I can't really tell what's going on from the video but if the arrestee was already handcuffed and was simply not walking then use of the taser should not have been authorized. Realistically speaking, the courts tend to give arresting officers a lot of leeway because they feel that it is difficult to judge officers' heat-of-the-moment decisions when one has the benefit of time to weigh and reflect upon the facts. In my opinion, the courts give too much leeway. While there are certainly instances where the best use-of-force decision is not clear, the majortiy of officers make bad decisions not because they're afraid or anxious, but because they are bad officers who are either unable or unwilling to effectively balance law enforcement and constitutional protections.
The reality of the status-quo is that police work attracts high-school grads and GED's whose priorities are being respected and retiring with a decent pension. As civilians, you have the power to affect this problem. If you want consciencious yet capable officers, you have to pay for them. Force your local politicians to fire and prosecute consistently and have them pay officers enough to attract educated individuals who want to positively affect their communities.
I watched the video.
There were a fair few people standing by and watching the show. If the police were really brutalizing him, why didn't anyone step in?
Look, here's the appropriate response if a mob of people are standing around watching a couple of officers torturing someone. Start picking up heavy objects and throwing them. Step in and stop the crime in action.
I don't think there was a crime here.
I think the guy was a pathetic sack of shit, needy for attention, and that he wanted to create a scene with the Police to prove some kind of idiotic point. They should have dragged him out of the building kicking and screaming far faster than they did.
JB
Brutality:
Was it ruthless? Certainly. The officer cared only about his convenience. He wasn't even threatened so you can't chalk it up to safety. Cruel? Tasering someone five times in a row is certainly cruel. He may not even have been able to stand. We may never know. Harsh, unrelenting? I think we know these things apply.
Therefore, it was brutality.
These things happened in the same city so by definition they happened in the same universe. What are you, an idiot? (Don't answer that, I think I know already.) The simple fact is that both this and the rodney king beating came from the same mentality - we're the cops, you're the bad guy, so it's okay if we do bad things to you. Thus, they are directly comparable - although I never brought up Rodney King. By the way, you don't think the LAPD invented police brutality just for Rodney, do you? If a cop intentionally bounces someone's head off the door of the patrol car, THAT is police brutality, even if they only do it once. Your grasp on English is regrettably poor.
Okay. You're a stupid misanthropic fuck who should have his testicles removed before someone is stupid enough to have sex with him and the result is pregnancy.
And psychology is something of a psuedoscience to begin with; I have little respect for psychologists in general and basically none for any armchair types. I do think you're incredibly fucked up in the head but I say that not because of any faith in head shrinking but simply because you're demonstrating that you're an asshole by saying that this guy deserves to be repeatedly assaulted simply because he was annoying and stood up for his rights.
I'm calling this police brutality because it is. I'm calling attention to it because I believe that it must stop.
If you really think that these were acceptable actions, then there is nothing more to say; you have no respect for decency or the law, both of which are concepts which in this case were shit upon by the police, whose actions were clearly illegal and not just contemptible. Contempt is what I have for people like you. Prison is where I would like to put people like cops who taser someone five times in a row, telling them to get up. He probably couldn't get up! That's what tasers are fucking for, making people unable to get up.
Let's recap what happened here. The kid is leaving, albeit slowly. The cops grab his arm. He goes limp. He gets handcuffed. He gets told to get up, then he's tasered so he can't get up, then he's told to get up, then he's tasered... this is like a school bully telling you to get out of his sight, then grabbing you and throwing you in the dumpster, then telling you to get out of the dumpster, and then hitting you every time you try to get out so that you fall back in. This cop is a bully, plain and simple, he got off on his power trip and now he must be removed from
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Better than a karma kissing ass whore, eh Anon Coward?
No matter how much of a "jackass" so many of the posters claim this guy is, it doesn't justify the police's actions.
A few years ago I watched 5 police officers restrain a friend of mine who had been using PCP (who is 6'2", 220, and extremely strong to begin with), without any use of a taser or gun. If 5 police officers can restrain my friend on PCP, those 3-4 UCPD officers can restrain that little guy without the use of anything other than a little elbow grease.
Even if he was inciting a riot or disobeying their commands, he could have been disabled, handcuffed, and lugged out to the cruiser without the use of the taser, by a single cop.
I hope this guy gets a fat check out of this crap.
Now you come to mention it, I have a feeling I've not been a regular at k5 for longer than 1.5 years... I hadn't really thought about it, but it must be longer than that. Wow.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Mods are on crack today. How is praising a poster for his well-made point FLAMEBAIT?
I've said it before: people who "argue" by means of moderation are COWARDS. Worse cowards than ACs. If you don't agree with me then POST A REPLY and argue like a man. Modding me "flamebait" or "overrated" is pure unadulterated cowardice.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
I have never seen a cop taser someone. I've never seen a gun used to threaten someone. The only time I have even been stopped and asked for ID is when I was driving too fast. When I take my family out at night, we feel safe. I do not feel threatened by people because of the colour of their skin or the clothing that they wear. I regularly go for walks alone in the evening to get some air and when I come across people I have never met, we exchange greetings and continue on our way without fear. I use libraries without having to show identification. When I am at home, my front door is not locked. I do not own a gun. If I screamed for help, my neighbours would come to help. If my neighbours screamed for help, I would go to help them. A policeman lives several houses down the street, reciently he took one of the neighbours children for a spin around the block in his policecar with sirens and lights flashing, because it was his birthday.
I live in Auckland, New Zealand - the land of the free.
have courage
Like it or not, we have to comply with our law enforcement officials.
Bullshit. Those are the words of a subject, not a citizen.
If you have been wronged, there is a channel to handle that.
Which is an utterly ignorant statement. The channels to handle that are all completely broken. They work for the police and against the citizens.
That is why your original statement is nothing but bullshit
When children that don't listen to parents and the parents let them get away with not listing grow up. They think they can get away with not listening and do as they wish. This is also known as the "Me" generation. This is the now teens and early 20's group of people that feel they have the right to do anything and everything they please without obaying laws or respecting the people around them.
Flame away, it will only help prove my point.
So much for Gandi and MLK, Jr.'s passive resistence. "Get the F**K UP and go or we'll zap you."
Funny -- I thought torture devices were forbidden in the US. And using a tazer as a torture device threat, as opposed to taking out a violent person, certainly sounds like it fits the definition.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The fact that they put their life on the line to protect other people doesn't give them the right to abuse their power, period. As the other guy said, police are given powers above and beyond those granted to ordinary citizens (including fry cooks), and if these guys aren't mature enough to deal with the occasional non-violent asshole without resorting to violence themselves, they should be stripped of that power.
That said, the details I've heard thus far are still a bit sketchy. If they tried to cuff him or drag/carry him out and he physically resisted then less-lethal subduing force may well have been justified. But if, as was implied, he was just sitting there being an ass and they shocked him with a potentially lethal device, then they crossed the line in a MAJOR way.
I wish that I had mod points. This was far and away the best post on the subject.
If only I had mod points I would mod this up so fast.
My humor is probably your flamebait
Not leaving when asked does not justify the use of potentially lethal torture. (Yes, stunguns are potentially lethal, and the accurate word for the deliberate infliction of agony to cause a person who is not an immediate threat to anyone's safety to comply with your demands is "torture".)
He was disruptive in that he was shouting, yes, but this is a strange new use of the word "combative".
Funny how you never see, for example, anti-abortion protesters who lie down in front of clinics get hit with stunguns or tortured with chemicals. Seems like it's always some leftist protesters, or some dark-skinned person.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The fact that the infliction of torture upon a person who was not any threat, is being described as "a model of LEO restraint and professionalism", pretty much sums up the state of America's decent into a police state. "Well, they could have maimed him, but they only used potentially lethal electric shock to torture him."
Nor does it mean that you torture them.
If someone goes limp, you can pick him up. As I noted in a post up-thread, you never see anti-abortion protesters who lie down in front of clinics get shocked, do you? The cops cuff 'em, pick 'em up, and haul them away.
These "police" were thugs; it's too bad that Reagan signed the Mulford Act to take away citizen's guns so they couldn't challenge police brutality.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I don't think that there's conclusive proof that the channels are broken. If the student had left as asked, without being "wronged", there would be no reason to even need a channel. He broke the clearly posted rules, and should have left as a result, even if it was just to return to his dorm room to get his ID card. He was not being asked to leave as some sort of extension of the Patriot Act which he raves about in the cell phone video, or because of his race, age, gender, sexual orientation, shoe size, or Mac/PC preference. It was because it was late at night, he was being belligerent, and he couldn't prove he was a student. Certainly, in this case the officers' behavior at the end was unacceptable and indefensible. So a wrong was in fact committed. But I would hold off judgement on whether those channels work or not until after the university finishes its investigation of the incident. I suspect that some fairly harsh disciplinary action will be taken against the officers for their actions, and a balance will be struck again.
And, whether Darby thinks it's bullshit or not, the reality is that following the rule of law is what makes us citizens. The very word comes to the English language from the French "citeain" which means something like "of the city". I believe that supporting order and a rule of law is at the very least implicit in that definition, if not explicit.
Well, there you go. A pretty clear indication of police brutality. They tasered the guy, and he is screaming in pain - and they expect him to stand up? What the fuck is that all about?
... and then they built the supercollider.
I would hope that, if I were a witness to an incident like the UCLA one (and I did watch the video, several times), I would have the strength to throw myself on top of the "detainee" so that any police would have to "tase me off" to continue their dirty work. Just imagine if even 5 people all did that at once -- the police would have to admit they had been defeated, nonviolently. They might call for backup, everyone involved might be arrested, but they would have to stop torturing the person and wouldn't be able to continue torturing others. I'd score that one in the W column. But all the same, I'm glad you were able to acknowledge that you're not so rash as your original post would indicate! ;)
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
Considering that stunguns are potentially lethal, I hope not.
Absolutely (as I recently argued here); and I would add, get rid of laws that educated and intelligent individuals will find odious to enforce.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
1) s/mentallity/mentality/, s/grapsing/grasping/
Now that that's out of the way...
2) Insults? Yes. You told me to insult you. You are getting upset because I did what you told me to do. You are a fucking moron. Of course, I won't do everything you say, but I certainly will where it coincides with my own instinct.
3) All language is loaded... with meaning. Which I employ. See, I know what these words mean, unlike yourself who can't even figure out that zapping a handcuffed subject with a taser repeatedly is brutality.
4) Slashbot mentality? I believe everything I said, and couldn't care less if anyone agrees. But nice try, kid.
Your final attempt to discredit me, to which I now reply, is "grasping at straws". Unable to discredit my argument, you wish to discredit the arguer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's much clearer that the police were breaking the law here, and much less evidence that the student was breaking any laws. Should the police be executed for non-compliance with the law? Or do police get immunity from laws?
... and then they built the supercollider.
of the YouTune video, and reading the official and unoficial reports that are available on the net, all I can say is the guy is lucky he didn't get the holy living shit beat of him.
You want to stand up to authority, you better have something more to stand on than the fact that you feel like you are being profiled.
If that were all it took, I would stop paying my income tax. I am a single male with an income +$100K per annum, tell me I'm not being profiled !
Like it or not, law enforcement officials have to comply with the law. When they do not, they are simply thugs with badges, whose actions should be stopped by any means necessary.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
You do not call attempting to incite others into a riot combative? Screaming to "get your hands off me" and jerking away from the officers to drop to the floor screaming is not the same as people that are sitting in one place, not raising their voices or making fast movements. You are comparing apples to oranges. Why does this have to have anything to do with his race and everything to do with someone that would not comply with the rules?
Is everyone in the world supposed to go, Oh, sorry, you have some sort of Ethnicity, go ahead and do whatever you want because heaven forbid someone think that we would be picking on you because you have something that makes you look different and not that we are doing something because you are actually breaking the law.
Oh, and you do not hear about regular white folk getting tazered because no one cares, not because it does not happen. But let someone zap/arrest/shoot/point/sneeze at someone of another race/economic background/sex/age/height/religion and suddenly that person is being singled out!
Abuse of power! RALLY THE TROOPS! Get the pitchforks! Rabble rabble rabble!!!!!
Yeah, but OC (Pepper Spray) is also potentially lethal. So are peanuts and peanut products.
The point of officers (security and police) getting tazed and OC'd during training is to demonstrate the effect they have on a person, and for the officer to know exactly how much is too much (the training I went through put us in worst-case scenario OC contamination and sustained tazes).
Not to say that the officers in question were right in their escalation of force (I wasnt there, so I cant say either way), but if the guy was still yelling and active, then the officers were showing restraint with their taze durations.
Incorrect. Dozens of people have been killed by tasers.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's one hell of a killer. 103 "stun gun-related" deaths in 4 years.
I wonder how many deaths occur when the police use no weapons, batons, or guns. I'd also be curious about the total number of Tazer uses over that period, as well. It would be interesting to see if there's any statistical significance to their statements. Until I see more numbers, I'm going to say that this article is speculative, and designed to evoke an emotional response rather than a rational response.
Getting arrested strikes me as a potentially lethal experience.
The subjective experience of young heathy and tough police trainees is not the way to determine "exactly how much is too much" when it comes to electric shock on random members of the public, any more than if you were to come into my karate class and test black belt students to determine how strong a punch a random member of the public could take.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I think the Supreme Court has already established that you have no right to privacy in a public place. The library seems like a public place. If you want privacy, stay at home.
I agree, the guy was a jerk. IF he had pulled out a weapn and started attacking people, everyone would be questioning how a guy with no ID got into the library. Rules are there for everyone. Now, if he had had his ID, then everything would have been cool, regardless of race. I would find it highly suspicious if someone refused to show ID and then refused to leave, regardless of race.
I also agree the police office went crazy. I have two brother-in-laws who are cops. I know a thing or two about what you should and should not do. There are many ways to exert your influence without physicallity.
And if this kid had a heart condition--something that's not at all obvious to the naked eye--he'd probably be dead now.
Which would be entirely his own fault. I'm sure he got plenty of warning that he would be tasered unless he stopped resisting and started walking. Let's remember, the video only shows the second half of the situation. In the first half, he laid down, refused to move, and started verbally abusing the cops.
So you advocate the death penalty for people who can't find their government-issued ID?
Not quite. I advocate the death penalty for stupid people, which includes people who can't find their ID AND decide to verbally abuse police officers and resist arrest.
This entire comment is absurd - it makes so many assumptions it ceases to be relevant.
Let us assume that, for the sake of argument, he was not acting suspiciously and the ID check was based on race, a personal dislike of the checker to the checkee, or was entirely random.
For whatever reason, the man did not want to leave, and the campus police for one reason or another were unable to get him to leave so contacted the UCPD. For whatever reason, the did not want to present any ID he may have had and was not entirely compliant.
etc.
If you make enough assumptions, you can suppose any situation you want, but in this case the assumptions have no basis in fact.
Can't see a damn thing. All you can do is hear the cops demanding the guy stand up, and the guy yelling back at them, plus the other students demanding to see the cops badge numbers.
Nothing to see here - move along.
As for the case itself, this will go no where - despite the fact that bloggers are reporting that one of the cops involved has a history of excessive force including choking a student with a nightstick and shooting a mentally ill homeless man. The cops can claim that the guy was either "resisting arrest" or "interfering with an officer" and that will be accepted as justification for using the Taser.
The facts are that the guy was in process of leaving, was seized by a cop (unnecessarily since the guy was leaving) and when the guy demanded to be released, the cops accelerated their use of force, and then when the guy went limp to avoid further abuse, they proceeded to Taser him.
This is clearly improper police procedure, at the very least an inappropriate way to handle a situation which had no reason to become violent.
Nonetheless, the cops will walk on this one, because police forces everywhere in this country are out of control as part of the general decline into fascism in this country. Go back and look at the NYPD goons involved in the Abner Louima case. When I first saw videos of these cops, I thought, "What section of the SS did they find these goons from?"
A primary reason for the Abu Ghraib and other torture scandals in Iraq was the presence of correctional officers in the National Guard. Correctional officers in both state and Federal prisons routinely abuse prisoners. It's no surprise it occurred in a military setting outside the overview of the court system.
Face it. The only proper attitude to cops these days is: death to cops!
The only good cop is a dead cop.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
A google search for "taser injury" provides TONS of examples.
A google search for "bowling injury" produces 3 times as many results as "taser injury". Any activity injures someone at some point.
But not on people who are passively resisting arrest.
How else do you resist arrest? He refused to move while verbally abusing the cops. If he went any farther it would be assault.
The proper response to someone passively resisting arrest, which means they're just lying there and not doing what you tell them, is to cuff them so they can't suddenly fight you, and carry them away.
So, the officers are supposed to risk a lower back injury and getting kicked just so some asshole can cause a scene? Taser the fucker. His well-being is far less important than anyone else's at that point.
In California, you're not trespassing until you are asked to leave and decline.
He got asked to leave and declined by laying down on the floor and bitching about privacy and civil rights. Did you miss the first part of the video where the cops instruct him to get up about a million times before they finally use the taser?
Whining? Sounds more like he was screaming in pain to me.
The first minute of the video shows him well before he got tasered, and he was definitely whining. There are hundreds of videos of police officers getting tasered as part of training. None of them scream in pain. The taser website even has pictures of all of their executives getting tasered. None of them scream in pain.
So what? Thousands of people die every year while taking a shit. About 42,000 people in the USA die in car crashes every year. What does this prove?
Y on YRO?
ROFL. how did this get modded "insightful"?
So if he was just laying there being a passive resistor, why then did the cops not just carry him out? How many cops were there? Certainly enough to carry out one scrawny college student. He didn't deserve to get tased once, let alone multiple times even if he was being an asshole.
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I don't think it's up to us to determine if he's innocent. I say let this go to court. There were plenty of eyewitnesses that can testify as to how the incident escalated. Personally I think that whether he was being uncooperative or not, unless he was trying to break out of a hold or threatening violence there was no reason to taze him. But yeah, let's see this one go to a proper investigation.
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That's a lot of assumptions, and it's not really possible from the video to figure out all the events. But what we do know is that in two cases he is immobile. This is helped by the police yelling at him to get up. There were three cops and not a single one of them tries to physically remove him (which they can legally do) or restrain him (again, legal) in any fashion, but rather just yell at him and use a taser (illegal on the taser part since it was used against police procedure).
You would have to assume that the officers could be highly suspicious of this possible ploy to get them in close so he could bite them since they knew he was perfectly capable of walking.
Police are trained to restrain and move people. Try catching an episode of COPS on television. If this weren't the case, criminals could just lie on the ground and wait for the cops to leave. So your assumption there is dead wrong.
Irrelevant, since he in no way attemped to incite a riot; but no, this guy was in no way "combative". "Combative" means "ready or inclined to fight"; a guy who lies down on the floor is pretty much demonstrating an disinclination to fight.
I didn't say "regular white folk", obviosuly white criminals as well as black criminals get tasered. I mentioned anti-abortion protestors. Can you show me a case of right-wing non-violent anti-abortion protestors getting shocked or sprayed with toxic chemicals, rather than being relatively gently carried onto a bus to jail? Are you suggesting that it would not be all over the news if something like that happened?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Again, you are comparing this student to peaceful sit in protests. That is absolutely not the case. He did not peacefully sit on the floor. He went limp when they attempted to "escort" him out and he continued to scream and be abusive. "here's your patriot act" "Here's your abuse of power" "I got tazed for nothing" "Here's your justice at work" "F*** off" and after repeated warnings, where he refused to comply he was tazed.
Those are the facts. He was not being peaceful, he was not complying. This has nothing to do with any other group no matter what comparison you are trying to form. This has to do with a student that felt they did not have to obey the rules. They were wrong.
I'm comparing them to non-violent protests, yes, but anti-abortion demonstrations where people lie down in front of clinics to block access are not "sit-ins" (as no one is sitting).
Going limp is exactly what nonviolent protesters often do. It demonstrates a total lack of combative intent, i.e., non-violence.
Screaming is irrelvevant, it's not a threat to anyone. "Stop screaming or I'm going to torture you" is a pretty clear violation of First Amendment protections. Distubing the peace may justify arrest. It does not justify torture under color of law enforcement.
And I've seen videos of limp and screaming anti-abortion protesters being carried away. but none being shocked.
"Refusal to comply" may justify arrest. It does not justify torture under color of law enforcement. Period.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
" He was tazered for not leaving when asked and after he became combative and disruptive."
Not leaving when asked does not justify the use of potentially lethal torture. (Yes, stunguns are potentially lethal, and the accurate word for the deliberate infliction of agony to cause a person who is not an immediate threat to anyone's safety to comply with your demands is "torture".)
This kind of excess is unjustifiable in any case. Police officers are granted tools such as tasers and nightsticks for the specific purpose of subduing people in a non-lethal manner when they present a physical danger to the officers or others and cannot be otherwise restrained. Therefore the only appropriate use of these tools is in cases where not using them would be more dangerous to the officers (and thus potentially to the suspects) not to use them. And only the minimum force required to end the attack or cause the suspect to submit to restraint is allowable.
The manufacturer of the TASER has specifically stated that these devices can be deadly if humans are subjected to them more than once in a single episode. Every police organization in the country has training that includes that warning and processes that are supposed to uphold the above. Yet these officers clearly exceeded all reason, the manufacturer's specifications, and any semblance of necessity. If the person in question was subject to arrest and resisted violently some form of subdual may be warranted. But overkill like this is never warranted especially noting the dangers. In any case it is never allowable to attack a bound prisoner as happened here.
Watch the video. The person being tasered was not loud at all until he was being shocked, which did cause him to scream. There was no reason to arrest him in the first place. He was a student in the University library studying and minding his own business. He did not quickly present his id card when asked by the officers and then did not leave fast enough for them. He said repeatedly that he wanted to leave, but the officers were blocking his way and shocking him to make him move even after they had him handcuffed. There is no justification for that kind of behaviour. This person was not committing any crime (the closest you can come is that once someone is asked to leave they are trespassing if they stay, but even then they must be given a reasonable chance to go) and did not present a danger to anyone. He was clearly tortured without reason, in fact the police overtly say that they are using the taser as a punishment (which is not its purpose). I really don't see how these police could even think that what they were doing was right and how they were inured to the pleas of their victim and the other students to stop torturing an innocent man. The person who said it may have been justified to threaten the crowd with tasering may actually be right in that it is amazing that the crowd did not fall violently upon the officers. Nevertheless this should have been a signal to them. It's their duty to maintain peace and order, to dispell unrest and defuse out of control situations. Clearly they failed in their duty here because they continuously acted as the sole agitators and escalators in what started out as a nonevent and nearly became a bloodbath.
All I can say is don't forget your fucking library card. One does learn to cow before the police and try never to do anything to make them the least bit nervous even when they are clearly wrong and unlawfully arresting you. It just does not pay because they have the means to make you very sorry that you annoyed them and if they feel like it they will use them. Then they will get away with it because even when they kill you they do not get punished. It's sad that even the law abiding citizen must fear the police and that we must treat them as an abused wife does her husband (it's a similar relationship the citizenry have with our police force) but that's how it is and will remain unti
Conservative fundies such as yourself need to get your head examined. You don't belong in civilized society. You are living in the dark ages. EVOLVE, GOD DAMN YOU, EVOLVE!
Meh.
You are saying nothing that justifies the police brutality. Does somebody think the guy WAS NOT being a jerk. No. But being a jerk doesn't get you tazered. No second side of the story here, move along people.
Meh.
In the California Republic, you must have ID on you whenever you leave your house. I *think* we're the only state in the union with that one.
I haven't perused all the replies yet, but the security guy that tazered him got kicked out of the police for being an abusive dickweed. When he assaulted frat boys, that was probably fine, but we all know how the police feel when you shoot a homeless man.
No wait, I'm sure it was fine for shooting the homeless, but a frat boy might have connections with lawyers...
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
"The officers did act professionaly. the guy was just stubborn."
/.
Taser's are not suppose to be used when a suspect is "stubborn":
"TASER systems use proprietary technology to immediately incapacitate dangerous, combative or high-risk individuals who pose a risk to law enforcement officers, innocent citizens or themselves."
I don't see "use Taser's on stubborn individuals" in there. Would you want to be tasered because a cop believes you're being stubborn? Because remember we're using the cop's definition of stubborn not yours, he might have had a long night and think you're being stubborn because you didn't produce your insurance card quickly enough.
Can you imagine what they would have done to that guy if he wasn't surrounded by a mob of students moments away from rioting? Think 5 tasers would have turned into 20.
I think all cops should have that line in the Taser FAQs memorized and if they break that rule they should be fired, we don't need cops going around tasering stubborn people because god knows that's 90% of
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I, for one, welcome our new taser wielding overlords.
The beatings will continue until moral improves.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-taser21no
It's off the front page now, but hopefully we can get this and some additional information brought up in a Slashback.
In my mind this is an incredibly important case. All the more so because outside of places like Slashdot and "liberal" blogs and newssources, there is the sentiment that the student "got what he deserved". This should come as no surprise, I suppose, considering how the public still blames rape victims for "asking for it" or suggesting that they "should have known better". I don't care how much of an ass this student is. That simply doesn't matter. We need to take every opportunity we can to get these thugs out of positions of authority. It is disgusting to see common people siding with thugs in positions of authority over their fellow citizens. The only way to combat this is to raise the outrage by getting public exposure of videos like these.
The cop certainly knew this guy couldn't get up after being tazed. I guess the cop's intent of shouting "Get up" was to show the bystanders that this guy was not obeying his orders, in the hope that the bystanders would thought the guy refused to get up.
Here it is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2wOxnAiIVs
Having a highspeed internet connection is awesome! I never woulda thunk just half a decade ago that something like YouTube would be possible.
Just taze the cop who tazed the student. Tell him to stand up immediately, and keep tazing him until he does.
> They take student security very seriously here.
Right, after seeing that video, I'm sure UCLA students feel *very* secure...
speak loudly or bring in a sandwich?
I was not saying he had done either of those thigns exactly - rather I was pointing out that in order to have no less that four campus police officers around before any tazing even started, he had to have been doing something a little less innocuous that either of those two simple things - or even refusing to show a student ID (which is what he reportedly did).
It's an indication that the story of him simply refusing to show an ID is missing something.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The video doesn't start until well after the incident has begun. I very very very much doubt the poster you quoted was a real cop. Reality: Cop gives lawful order 20+ times; 2) Spoiled brat, never told "no" in his life, refuses; 3) Tazed, as he should have been. This guy is an 18-year veteran following policy. THis little "victim" created the whole incident. How many times does a police officer have to ask someone to follow a lawful order before using force? 1,000?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The whole idea is that you know it's illegal, and choose to risk arrest and/or punishment anyway, because you believe the cause is just.
I wonder what cause he thinks he was fighting... if any?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
just in case you don't know: most Iranians are white and speak an Indo-European language, so his English might have been very good ... could not find a picture of the guy on the web, but I am quite certain that unless you already knew he is not American you could not tell he is "ethnic" or foreign.
You could have been in his place.
I read your post and thought, "this guy has it mostly right" (getting unions in the 20s and 30s required much bloodshed so I'd correct your 1950-70s with 1920-30s and 1950-70s). I thought for a minute, "Now that the average person has realized how screwed up the US is, changes will happen".
Then I realized I was reading /. and the rants of a crazy programmer mean nothing. Maybe if linux had taken the profitable world by storm...
You are absolutely right about the 20s, etc. These things are somewhat cyclical and have been for a long period of history. It does bear some study but it's hard to quantify what is in essence qualitative data.
You are also right about the ranting. All the ranting on slashdot or youtube or whatever in the world will change nothing if words are never translated to action. I have thought for a long time that we need a real grassroots effort to change the direction of government and hack the system. The problem is keeping the momentum of such revolutionary change and avoiding the seemingly inevitable slide from revolutionary to reactionary which seems to have happened in most revolutions (I'm thinking here of our own, where the second president we had was so unable to take criticism he undertook the creation of unconstitutional law, unlawful arrest and brutal suppression of the dissenters. Or if you like the example of the revolutions of France, Cuba, and Russia which, whether you agree with their particular politics or not clearly quickly devolved into an endless struggle against counterrevolution that destroyed the stated intent of the original.
Here what we need are people who are willing to turn back the tide and stand up for human rights, who believe in what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independance. Those people have not only to get out and vote, which for now is unlikely to effect major change although it needs doing in any case, but they must themselves stand for office and vote for one another. Whether it be under the guise of a takeover of one of the established parties, formation of a new party, a bunch of independants, or a simple coalition of like minded individuals dedicated to a common cause regardless of party affiliation, it needs doing. Nothing less will achieve the goal of re-establishing our original purpose, our rights, and the primacy of our nation as the foremost proponent of the advancement of human rights.
In the case of the police problem a simple solution has been proposed in just about every jurisdiction in the country. That is to have a citizen's council who can hear grievances and investigate alleged wrongdoing on the part of the police department. Internal affairs departments exist within police departments, but they are often suspect in their activities especially in cases like this. After all it is the foxes guarding the henhouse. There is a reason for the policy of appointing an independant council to investigate government wrongdoing. It removes the colour of corruption that would taint even the most perfect investigation of this sort conducted by the alleged perpetrators. Unfortunately what is supposed to be a proper check against the potential depredations of the President of the United States is a bridge too far for the police. In every case of which I am aware the public outcry for an independant civilian board to oversee the police department has been summarily denied. There's no vote, just the answer of no, incredibly coming from the police department itself.
While I am sure that this could be effected were the public officials we elect willing to stand up for it or were a referendum allowed, I think it is important to address the officers' concerns. To my mind they have much to gain from the implementation of such a policy. Acting more openly and submitting their actions to scrutiny, as well as actually dealing with officers who themselves commit crimes rather than simply moving them from one department to another (a
Well, maybe YOU want to live in a "papers please" Amerika, but I sure as hell don't!
It's not like he was on the public streets. He was IN A LIBRARY AFTER NORMAL HOURS. Police damn well better be checking IDs, I don't want my shit stolen by some hobo next time I use the library.
Yes, you personally, for no good reason, could be abused, beaten, zapped, injured by the police.
No, I wouldn't. I am not an idiot. If a police officer tells me to get the hell out, I get the hell out instead of whining about the Patriot act.
Maybe some of us actually have a pair of testicles and aren't pussies.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
well I have never taken a good completly one way beeting, but ya the not being able to see out of a eye, ringing ear, bleeding nose, broken finger (granted nothing really permanent like broken teeth...that often happens when shocked) The advantage of a non tazed beeting is 1)adrenaline 2)visible evidence.
(in High Shcool) I fealt almost nothing while being beat (got a few good licks in before his 2 friends jumped in) thanks to adrenaline.
Then when my friends could see the results they were more than willing to settle later. Not to mention the sympathoy from the gals.
now in the case of a cop beeting, assuming it's a one way issue, you got some good evidence to get revenge (in court of course
And, having not been on the receiving end of lynching, etc., most Angloids find it easier to find moral fault with the recipients of police and vigilante violence.
They have not learned to be justifiably suspicious of the police.
This "Tazer Cop" has a history of abuse, and was dismissed from several positions in the past. He is a serial brutalizer. I hope his brakes fail before he attacks again.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Right, but now we get back into the discussion about HOW it is acceptable to remove someone. it is not appropriate to use violence against a nonviolent suspect. tasering him while handcuffed simply does not qualify as necessary force - it was entirely unnecessary... and the cop grabbed his arm without arresting him, which is assault whether he's trespassing or not. One crime does not excuse another.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I guess we should get out our tin foil hats too right?
Say hello to well timed enter points for the video. Home boy was asked to leave because he couldnt provide ID. He wouldnt get up to leave. Being some dumbass trying to make a stand. Well he stood against a taser. He was told 'stand up or get the taser'... I dont buy the 'he just got tased so he couldnt stand up' argument because he had plenty of strength to go on his pre-rehearsed patriot act speech.
very good. you win TEH PRIZE! If he actually assaulted the officer, THAT would be non-passive resisting of arrest.
I sincerely hope something like this happens to you so that you can gain some perspective. He has rights, and those rights were denied him. If the cops don't want to work, they can fucking stay home. Nothing gives them the right to torture him, which is precisely what this was.
Neither one of us saw the beginning of the whole event, because it's not in the video, but the generally accepted sequence of events has him being seized by the arm before he drops to the floor. If he has not been arrested, then seizing his arm is assault. He cannot defend himself from this assault because the perpetrator is a police officer and as we all know, the blue shield protects them well.
Therefore he took the only means available to him to defend himself from assault; he utilized passive resistance. This is exactly what Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated as a response to police violence. It's very mediapathic when a police officer is assaulting an unarmed, unaggressive citizen - just as it was here. The only difference between that and this is that those people were black and this guy is iranian.
The general consensus from eyewitness reports SEEMS to be (again, not the greatest access to these people yet) that he was leaving the library when he was assaulted, albeit slowly. I do not believe the law specifies the rate at which you must depart.
So that's sufficient cause to taser him? You should be a LA cop, you'd fit right in.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Show me some evidence.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Neither one of us saw the beginning of the whole event, because it's not in the video, but the generally accepted sequence of events has him being seized by the arm before he drops to the floor.
Grabbing someone's arm is police violence? What the fuck are you smoking?
I sincerely hope something like this happens to you so that you can gain some perspective.
This will not happen to me, for the simple reason that I am not a whiny self-important asshole. If a cop tells me to get out, then I will get out.
The only difference between that and this is that those people were black and this guy is iranian.
So what, you think the tasering would be OK if the guy was white? Are you racist or just retarded? MLK protested against the widespread discrimination and racism directed towards black people. This asshole didn't have his student ID, didn't feel like going back to get it, and decided to get sassy to the cops and resist arrest. Notice any difference between these contexts?
I do not believe the law specifies the rate at which you must depart.
The law specifies that you must depart as fast as the cop tells you to depart if you don't want to be arrested. It's at the discretion of the enforcing police officer.
So that's sufficient cause to taser him?
Resisting arrest? Hell yes.
That's not what I said, although it is a violent act. What I said is that it was assault, which is true. Please try to focus on things I've actually said instead of making things up due to either your agenda of persecution or your poor grasp on english (I can't tell which it is.)
Well, I'm glad you're a mindless sheep who does whatever an authority figure tells you.
He wasn't resisting arrest because at that point he had not been arrested. But I guess that little detail escaped your notice.
In fact, the only thing he resisted was assault, which is illegal. Both morality and legality were in line for this one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, firstly, the patriot act was mentioned before the tasing, I believe. Secondly, being able to talk and being able to stand are very different things, involving different muscles. Also, after he was repeatedly tased, all he could do was basically scream in pain.
Regardless - the legality of being asked for an ID is questionable. It's not a law, it's a campus code. the legality of trepeatedly tasing someone who is not a physical threat is not in question. It is an illegal assault. So, the student might have done something against university policy. But the police violated US law and human rights.
There's nothing illegal about "being a dumbass" or screaming about the patriot act.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Oderint, dum metuant.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
why on earth would he start screaming about the patriot act before he was tased?
police have the right and authority to uphold the law using force. I personally would use a taser than physically drag him out, but i guess in the end they wound up having to do it both ways.
the legality of asking for an ID is not questionable. Especially not in the instance described at this stupid left wing hippie college.
i mean honestly, did you expect the police to just stand there and not do anything when he refused? "Well guys, he says no, what should we do? I mean, we cant really do anything, so I guess we just leave this nutjob here"
lol...hardly... homeboy is lucky im not a cop. as I stated earlier, i would have tased him between punches to the face.
and to think, this whole thing could have been avoided if he just did what he was supposed to do.
Disclaimer: I do think this whole 'patriot act' thing, as it were, is going a bit far into the reaches of our privacy etc etc. But in this particular instance, the guy got what he had coming to him.
question...did the guy ever once in the video say "i cant stand, sorry, you just tased me"? Or was it some portions of his prerehearsed speach in between screams?
(to the tune of "Camptown Racers")
Mohammed's not Mostafa's guy,
Du da, du da.
He's not Muslim, he's Baha'i,
Du da du da day.
Persian, but not from Iran,
Du da, du da.
Born in LA, Southpark fan.
Du da du da day.
Tasered by a bully-man
Du da, du da.
Pressed da button, said to stand
Du da du da day.
CHORUS:
Theo-cons riled up,
look'in really lame.
Jumpin' to conclusions 'bout
mad mullahs and their plans,
Lawsuit comin' to UCLA...
Perhaps because he was asked for ID? I don't know, I'm not that guy.
police have the right and authority to uphold the law using force.
Using reasonable force. This use of force was clearly not reasonable.
And what law were they upholding? It's not illegal to not show an ID.
the legality of asking for an ID is not questionable. Especially not in the instance described at this stupid left wing hippie college.
Yes, the legality of asking for ID is questionable. Also, I did not see anybody who looked like a "hippie" in the video. And what makes the college "stupid and left wing"? I suspect you are trolling.
i mean honestly, did you expect the police to just stand there and not do anything when he refused? "Well guys, he says no, what should we do?
False dichotomy. They had many other options besides using a taser. What reason is there to use the taser at all? they weren't physically under threat, and tasers can be dangerous and cause fatalities in some people. So why use the taser?
Anyway, what would be the problem with doing nothing? The outcome would probably have been much better than what did happen with the use of force. There was no threat to safety in leaving him alone.
lol...hardly... homeboy is lucky im not a cop. as I stated earlier, i would have tased him between punches to the face.
Why? Because you're a sadist? please try to explain why you would commit such a horrible and illegal act. You talk about "enforcing the law" - but you seem more determined to break it and undermine it.
and to think, this whole thing could have been avoided if he just did what he was supposed to do.
The whole thing could have been avoided if the cops did their jobs professionally and took reasonable actions.
Disclaimer: I do think this whole 'patriot act' thing, as it were, is going a bit far into the reaches of our privacy etc etc. But in this particular instance, the guy got what he had coming to him.
Why? What did he do to deserve this?
question...did the guy ever once in the video say "i cant stand, sorry, you just tased me"? Or was it some portions of his prerehearsed speach in between screams?
Why does it matter? I don't think you'd be so polite in such circumstances. Do you think it would have made any difference? It is obvious the cops were on a power trip, nothing he said would have made any difference. The cops should have bloody well known the effects of tasing, they shouldn't have to be told. Their behaviour was clearly inappropriate. Do they have enough brain cells to rub together to understand that the whole purpose of tasing is to reduce mobility? They were either too stupid to be cops, or were knowingly inflicting torture.
... and then they built the supercollider.
You should ask a cop. Or, for a better answer, a criminal justice professor.
At least that's how I heard of it.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
I'm not saying you're wrong, but cops have a vested interest in having you carry ID at all times, and cannot be trusted, and a professor can be wrong (I've corrected many on small points in their own areas of expertise.) I just want to see some evidence and hearsay doesn't do it for me. Personally I want to see it in print before I believe it. I especially don't trust police, who are typically fairly ignorant of the laws they are supposed to enforce anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think you are the one with a poor grasp of English. Here's the definition of "assault" from a dictionary:
A police officer grabbing someone's arm constitutes neither a violent physical attack nor an unlawful attempt to injure the person.
Well, I'm glad you're a mindless sheep who does whatever an authority figure tells you.
Yeah, I try to avoid breaking laws for no good reason.
That's nice. Unfortunately for you they don't give a fuck about your dictionary in court. Assault has a legal definition. You have just proved that you are not qualified to participate in this discussion.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, I had professors who would be mistaken about things, and cops, when they're not in uniform, have been open with me about knowing knowing much about laws.
Maybe this professor was mistaken, but it was a Criminal Justice intro class at the local Cal State. The prof made a point about pointing out that California was the only state that required citizens to have a state ID or drivers license on them.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Remember that video of the black-teen getting his head slammed into the car hood, while unconscious?
T*O*P*I*C Discussion Started: 07-10-2002, 2:54 PM
Attorneys for a teen who was videotaped while an Inglewood police
officer slammed him onto a squad car plan to file a lawsuit over the
incident as public pressure mounts and various law enforcement agencies
launch separate investigations. Meanwhile another man claims he too was
beaten by Inglewood police officers. What do you think about the police
brutality situation in Inglewood? Elsewhere? What, if anything, do you
think the videotape proves?
[ a woman working for the Feds was also subject to abuse by that a-hole. Really got messed with. She was yelling at the a-hole, that she was on "his side" ]
don87654 07-16-2002, 3:27 PM
Southern California cops are just plain crooked, period! I was once a
State of California Correctional Peace Officer at the California
Institute for Women at Frontera. We were taught in the Academy at Galt
how to formulate evidence to make ourselves look good and victims to
look bad. I refused to cater to this treatment and was fired by an
abusive Lieutenant that was in charge of Internal Affairs at the time.
Later because of my outspoken stances on this, charges were levied
against me involving vehicle tampering and simple assault and I was
convicted of this by what appeared to be paid police witnesses. My
attorney at the time, one of the best criminal lawyers in southern
California, told me to pack my bags and leave town, which I did. It took
him 8 long years to get my conviction erased from court records and to
get the warrant for my arrest dropped by the court so I was no longer
"wanted". It does not matter where they are at....these California cops
that completed the Academy in Los Angeles, or for the State, are just
plain crooked--they are taught to be that way
Jbp912 07-10-2002, 6:21 PM
I am a disabled military veteran. I am in my senior years and I have
become cynical of police officers and the entire judicial system. There
has been too much lying, cover-ups, and irresponsible behavior by law
enforcement persons. It seems there is a lack of proper training, poor
recruitment, and too much hubris. The bottom line is bad management and
no accountability, but we live in an age of extreme mediocrity.
Thank you, JBP
[ he just described Bush Jr in Iraq: irresponsible behavior & hubris ]
Patriottoo 07-10-2002, 4:20 PM
This is a clear cut case of a rabid, over zealous, adreinaline pumped,
and I'm suprised his eyes weren't bulging out of his head cop! The teen
was OBVIOUSLY in custody when he was BRUTILIZED with the UNNECESSARY
FORCE of SLAMMING his head on the trunk lid of the police car and then
PUNCHING him FIST CLOSED in the face, by the this cop. I don't care who
a person is, or what they have done, NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY deserves
to be treated in that manner. Once the 'cuffs' are on, all force that
was necessary to place a suspect in custody MUST STOP! I hope this
maniac of a police officer is prosecuted to the fullest extent that the
law allows, and receives the maxium penalty for his crimes! Only when
the courts get serious and start holding those in the police agencies
around the country who would engage in this type of brutality, fully
responsible for thier crimes will we see an end to it!
Patriot Too