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University of Florida Student Tasered At Political Rally
An anonymous reader writes "During a political rally at the University of Florida, an annoying student was tasered while attempting to ask Senator Kerry (D-MA) some questions regarding the 2004 election. Police are looking into whether excessive force was used to prevent the student from going over his alloted question period." There are also several YouTube videos available of the incident.
The guy is a journalism student. He knew that his actions were going to get publicity. He knew what was going to happen if he acted out. Really, what was his motive???
Attention Whore?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
The student deserved to get zapped. He went in with the intention of causing a scene and being the center of attention. Mission accomplished.
He was still tasered. A taser is an infliction of pain. This is unfair to the students who have a RIGHT to protest.
I know the first amendment right was violated here. What other rights were violated? Any lawyers on slashdot?
--ShieldW0lf
There's really not that much "version of story", since there's video showing him strugling against the police for a long time before a taser is used.
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Next thing you know, Nixon will be calling in the National Guard to KILL students!
Oh, wait.. never mind, that already happened.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Somebody call a whaaaambulance
You can't take the sky from me...
Reading through these comments, it amazes me how many of them are along the line of "He deserved it" or "He tried to provoke it". If that had been President Bush or Vice-President Cheney that this incident occurred to, I would have seen the word "Nazi" in many forms at least 200 times by now in these comments. This underlines the point that the vast majority of US campuses support free speech, as long as it is left speech.
The guy is a journalism student. He knew that his actions were going to get publicity. He knew what was going to happen if he acted out. Really, what was his motive???
Since when was "being an attention whore" deserving of intense pain and possible fatal force (google it- tasers cause quite a number of deaths. They're NOT "non" lethal.)
Was he acting like a dick? Yes. Was he resisting arrest? Yes. Was he a threat to officers, the public, or himself? No, and thus they should have struggled with him to get him into cuffs, not just tasered him.
There is the temptation these days to develop a hero complex around police and fire, especially after "9/11" (where many, many, MANY more "civilians" were killed than police/fire personnel.) The popular political line is something like "we don't want to put our police in danger."
To me, the rights of the public at large vastly outweigh those of someone who consciously chooses a job which is perceived to be dangerous; you want to be a cop? Take the risk that, during an arrest, you might (heaven forbid) get an elbow to your face and a black eye. We'd have a lot less Rescue Rogers running around if this were the prevailing public attitude.
PS: Number on cause of fatalities, overwhelmingly, for police? Traffic accidents. Murder rate for police officers? ONE THIRD THE RATE OF THE GENERAL POPULACE.
Please help metamoderate.
When people act like idiots, authority steps in. When enough people act like idiots, other people imitate them, and soon you have a population that needs the Nanny State or Police State, which seem to be the same thing.
Clearly tasering him was excessive, but shooting him might have made life better for the rest of us.
I'm proud of Slashdot users for seeing through his attention-grabbing drama. The guy wanted to tell authority to fsck off, and wanted to get some people riled up so he would get his name in the newspapers, and voila! it's there, at the price of only a few thousand volts of nerve-rattling electricity.
technical writing / development
He was disrupting a public forum - denying others their right to speak.
He would not surrender the microphone, he would not leave quietly - and in a crowded auditorium he chose a fight with the police.
I don't know about that... The guy was being disruptive. He wasn't really asking legitimate questions but, rather, making accusations in the form of questions. And I think it's a fair assumption to make that the guy was purposefully trying to be disruptive, so he should have expected to get thrown out. Really, the guy was kind of a jerk.
Actually, the only thing I had a problem with in this whole situation was that the police hit him with a taser. There were plenty of police to drag him out if they wanted to. A taser isn't supposed to be used as a cattle prod.
I love Slashdot, it makes it so easy to find the authoritarian assholes who deserve to be tortured in a Chinese prison camp.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
You mean someone as 'enlightened' and 'caring' as John "I went to Vietnam" Kerry actually used strong-arm tactics on someone from the crowd? How can that be?
It can be because, these guys are what you fear with the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy". These are the same people claiming not to be racist, yet organize a demostration where they throw Oreos at Maryland Senator running, there. A _black_ candidate.
They claim to not be racist, yet apportion money just for blacks, because they're black.
They claim to be enlightened, but they charge more taxes on the people from whom we get the most jobs...middle and upper class business owners.
They claim to have knowledge of the right way to fairness, yet the universal payer plan for healthcare is nothing more than an thinly-veiled way to control your life from Washington, DC. And what happens when they get it? **THEY** decide what you eat, **THEY** decide wether you need exercise, or to have children.
Guys, you're backing the wrong team. Universal Healthcare, for instance, is a nightmare to it's payers. And it's the most expensive addition to the nanny state we could ever envision.
When they say it's "Free", they mean someone else pays. That'd be you. If, because your employer has been taxed into bankruptcy, you have a job with which to pay YOUR taxes.
Open your eyes; we really, really, REALLY need term limits, and to restrict the growth and intrusion of the fed at all costs...or YOU just might be one of these guys, trying to recite the original Constitution at such an event.
Think I'm crazy? Right now CO2 has been declared a pollutant. Immenent Domain is now being used to take people's houses for higher taxes. Free speech no longer covers the six months before an election. And all over the place people are outlawing trans-fats.
Wake up!
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
I hope, I REALLY hope you get arrested some day for asking a question. I would LOVE to see you calmly calling your lawyer when you have 30kV on your back. Really, I do.
Asshole.
So what's the consensus? Drugs, or unassisted left-wing delusion?
Also, they arrested him for trying to incite a riot.
Delusion.
The poor guy must be sorely disappointed that the audience didn't rise up and crush the obvious repression...
Well, college as all about getting an education, right? He got one.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Mass tackle a guy for asking a question? Really? You will do what the uniform says you should do. You will do what the uniform says you should do. You will do what the uniform says you should do. You will do what the uniform says you should do. You will do what the uniform says you should do. You will do what the uniform says you should do. Good boy. Let me ask a question. If you have a mass group of uniformed security forces armed with guns, tasers, and mace, try to lead you away in a politically charged event, what does that say? Does it say that you are just trying to enforce the rules of questioning, or does it say you are using jackboot thugs to control information and thought processes? FUCK THIS POLICE STATE BULLSHIT.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Interesting how your perception of who is "insane" isn't the people who were laying down on the ground in front of charging horses and then complaining about being trampled.
There were female cops present. blame them for being weaker. The guy that tasered him was a black cop. Let's call him a racist!
Either way, this college kid acted like an out of control douchebag. And he also hammed it up for the cameras that he knew were rolling, screaming like a.. well, like an attention whore. I've seen people get tagged with tasers before. The screaming & crying is just an attention whore tactic.
regardless of whether the police were doing the right thing, the crowd should have tried to save the guy.. this is frighteningly close to people being too afraid to do anything when their neighbors are dragged away by the gestapo, and the threat is clear in the video "stay in your seats or you'll be tasered and arrested too."
Well said, friend.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
We're seeing more of these recently. YouTube setup students that perform some sort of civil disobedience then they ratchet it up until it warrants an arrest. They are ready for the taser by screaming before hand and then they escalate the screaming throughout. There was a time when this punk would have been knife sticked to death. But instead of counting his lucky stars that he wasn't he'll probably become a professional activist. :-/
Disturbing is the fact that those sheep fellow students did not protest when those fascist police officers were arresting the guy. Instead they were laughing! Even more disturbing is that this happened in front of a presidential candidate that almost become the president. Kerry caused this poor fellow's arrest and did nothing to stop it. Anything less than the end of the political career of Kerry and the imprisonment of the police pigs is unsatisfactory. In addition, the UF owes a public apology and to institure mandatory courses on US history, constitution, sociology etc for all its ignorant students!
you should submit to the uniformed thugs who have decided that they didn't like your question
Please take your ridiculous hyperbole to digg where it belongs. The uniformed thugs had no opinion about what he said, and you know it. Are you really so retarded as to think that the police were standing in the back saying amongst themselves, "omfg did you hear that? he asked Kerry about Skull and Bones! Fuck, we've got to take this kid down!"
That's not what happened at all. You're just wrong. There's no other way around this. You're just completely wrong. What happened was, the kid was impolite to everyone else there. The kid was a douche. That is the fact, and nothing you can say changes that. The cops stepped up for just one purpose, to enforce the rules that everyone else was following. If that douchebag kid had just stepped away from the mic then the confrontation would have stopped - but NOO, he had to throw a hissy fit. The police reacted to his hysterical hissy fit, and not what he said.
Where exactly do you get off making a statement like, "the uniformed thugs who have decided that they didn't like your question"
No seriously, I'd love to hear your explanation for that statement. It's doublethink. Your statement is doublethink. You look at what the police did, which was to react to the guy's behavior, and you say that the police didn't like his question? It's doublethink. And you should be ashamed of yourself.