UCLA student gets tasered and no to very little media attention (1 Viewer)

[TV555]

A) I'm a student and "trying" to stay clearminded on this.
I have been tasered before by friends.. go ahead laugh, it was not in a criminal manner.
I have also tested my roommate's electric dog collar to make sure it's not overly painful. This does not mean I am going to test a gun shot to the leg or anything so no changing what I said.

B) I feel there is a racial element here. I think the response to this "ham" of a student was above and beyond.
IMO, it was an abuse of power. I think the "anyone could be a terrorist or Columbine shooter is the worse reasoning I have heard." That reasoning provides for an auto-excuse everytime due to a super low probability extreme. Tasering him 5 times w/ 5 cops watching while 20 students are around telling you to stop..

C) You're right that I have not tried every taser out, but I get the impression that everyone thinks it's just a buzz wakeup call like those handshake gags.

D) "Untrue. The taser like any electrical current is either on or off. If it is on, muscular responses are incapacitated, if they are off, an individual has full muscular control."

No, not in my experience. You feel like your body will not respond. It took me a couple of minutes to recover.
Why would you incapacitate the muscular response of someone lying limp on the ground.

E) If this is looked at as an abuse of authority, then the next ? is why. This of course leads to the racial profiling.
Who is our current enemy #1 - Iran. I think it must be tough for someone from Iran living in the US today.

I have said my piece. I guess oddly I am in the minority here at least. I wish they had some other videos to see.


F) Very few people in NC know about this. I have had to show some youtube videos to at least 10 people.

G) It unfortunately makes me think of the gestapo and to make this more HTF like V for Vendetta where they talk of how people's rights are eroded while they smile and move along. Maybe I am a sap, but I find it very scary.

 

[mattCR]

This depends on how high of a setting the taser is on.

 

[Scott L]

police are there for your protection.

Why in the blue hell you'd want to disobey them when they ask for a simple ID, then act like an ass when they keep tasering you is beyond me.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Sometimes, a cop is a cop. Sometimes, he's just a man with a gun.

 

[Scott L]

good, bad, he's the guy with the taser

 

[Chuck Mayer]

I think the "why" is now clear. To get attention, and then sue. The american way. I wonder who he'll sue? I hope whoever it is, they countersue. What a worm.

 

[Carlo_M]

And why should they? This affects them how? One kid, in a very racially diverse campus with UCPD officers who do not have any history of racial profiling gets tasered while in disobedience of the law and it's supposed to make national news? Trust me, there are way more important things going on right now in the world around you. After the initial hoopla

 

[Holadem]

I honestly thought the complaints were exaggerated until I saw the video. Are you guys for real?

I have no issues the initial tase if that guy wouldn't comply. But they kept tasering a handcuffed guy because he wouldn't walk? And people are OK with this? How is tasering this guy any different from punching him in the face because he wouldn't walk? Would you be OK with that too?

There were at least 3 officers there. You guys are gonna tell me there was no way to drag a handcuffed guy of apparently average build out of there without stunning him?

Uh yes you can. I see no justification whatsoever for 3+ cops to use physical pain to get an already neutralized suspect to walk out of a freaking university library.

I am no fan of the Patriot Act (an understatement to say the least), but that has fuck shit to do with anything. This is cops exercising poor judgment, plain and simple.

I must have said it like 5 times already in this post, but just put your dislike of agitators aside for a second and consider this simple fact: the guy was already handcuffed.

--
H

 

[JeremyErwin]

ah, exam period. A time to stress out, a time to spend every waking moment at the library, a time to drink coffe all night long, and a time to get tasered by cops... Glad I'm out of college.

 

[Carlo_M]

The guy was already handcuffed, I'll give you that Hola. But he wouldn't move with the officers--he actually voluntarily resisted. And where the video takes place is the start of a set of stairs I'm very familiar with (having studied a lot). At the point where they taze him, it is at the top of those stairs. If the kid doesn't get moving, they can't drag him bippity-bump down about 40 stairs with a bend in the middle of it, bruising and battering him all the way down if they have to drag him over the stone steps. That really would have been brutal. And to ask them to deadlift him is out of the question, as they need to be in a position to defend themselves in case he gets violent (and yes they can become violent even while handcuffed). So they used the drive stun to drive him into compliance (which you can't see on the video but people who were there and saw it say he did start complying and walking down those stairs). People who are familiar with the drive stun setting on these tasers, who testified to the school paper and other sources, say it acts more like a cattle prod.

So from what I saw, the tactic worked. And the fact that he did start walking down those stairs shows that his muscles weren't incapacitated by a full taser blast.

The guy I know from the video said this to me today: "yeah the cops could have been gentler, but that dude was being an a#$hole from the beginning." I gave him the flyer that was emailed out to all UCLA today and told him to testify as a witness since he was there for the whole thing.

Again, I am not saying the officers did not use excessive force, but you really can't judge just from that one (very grainy and poorly shot) video without taking everything into consideration.

If it turns out that the officer(s) were using excessive force, then I do hope the full measure of the legal system is taken against them. But that's to be determined not just from the video, but also from eyewitness testimonies, which to put it mildly, are conflicting.

 

[Paul D G]

I didn't hear any of the kids saying "Dude, just show them your ID card" either.

What threat did he present? If he didn't have an ID to be in the library then he presumably shouldn't have been there. Maybe he just wanted to use the facility for something. Maybe he was stalking a girl who was there. Maybe he wanted to burn the place down. Who knows.

You can argue all you want that it was 'brutality' because now it's known the kid was a student. But what if he hadn't? What if the guy who asked him for his ID in the first place just blew it off and the student wound up killing someone there? Then everyone would be yelling at the school and the police for not protecting the students, etc. You can't have it both ways.

-paul

 

[Holadem]

Textbook false dilemma (logical fallacy). The alternative to brutality isn't to let the student off the hook.

--
H

 

[Scott L]

what would Holadem do?

Seriously though H, would you physically pick him up and haul him down the stairs or just wait it out and continue to let him be a disturbance on the library floor?

 

[Mike Brogan]

"would you physically pick him up and haul him down the stairs"
Is that too much to ask? I know it was implied that this would be a difficult task due to the stairs but this being a college library I'd imagine it's wheelchair accessible via ramp or elevator. And was giving him the taser multiple times causing less of a disturbance than simply carrying him? I don't condone how the student was acting but the end result was over the line. That doesn't mean that the kid deserves some mutli-million dollar settlement just that the officers involved deserve to be reprimanded.

 

[Carlo_M]

No on both counts. First of all, there are no elevators only a convoluted wheelchair lift which would not be of much help (and be more of an obstruction) to officers trying to deal with a suspect.

Two: it's not just the difficulty of the stairs, but when you deadlift someone (which you would have needed to do with him) you give up your ability to defend yourself. Try this: two of you deadlift a buddy and then tell your buddy to struggle and get violent while you two are deadlifting him. You will be in no position to defend yourself at all. Which is why cops don't do that.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Wow, and I may assume they are the former when you need them to help you and the latter all other times, right? So exactly who is profiling who here? How about this:

"Sometimes a muslim is a peaceful muslim. Sometimes he's just a terrorist with a bomb."

I also have a family member in law enforcement and the difference between your statement and mine is that the "man with the gun" has to follow rules and regulations and he faces the possible loss of his job and/or jail time if he harms others indiscriminately and the "terrorist with the bomb"; well it is his job to harm others indiscriminately and he only faces paradise.

Your choice . . .

 

[Holadem]

Really though, what's that got to do with anything? Why the attempt from all sides to frame this issue within a far larger context that warranted?

--
H

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Because people brought up racial profiling and "sometimes cops are just men with guns". If not challenged, these statements become a given part of the discussion, not to mention when brought to the forefront, they reveal more than a few biases in the poster's responses. Also, often framing it in a larger context reveals the absurdity of one or either "side" of the discussion by taking a general statement about the topic (i.e. "Sometimes, a cop is a cop. Sometimes, he's just a man with a gun.") and revealing just how stupid that general observation is when applied to actual reality.

Besides, I wasn't the one who tried to "frame this issue within a far larger context that warranted", the "victim" was.

 

[Chu Gai]

Perhaps we need more information before any conclusions can be drawn.

 

[TV555]

This is pretty much my line of thought. However, I think that the legal case should move forward and settle or the kid loses to prevent something like this from happening.
Also, if this is the tasering policy w/i the handbook and training they go by, then maybe it should be reexamined.

2 people can easily deadlift that kid. If he resists, THEN you taser him.

Assuming he's a murderer or terrorist to fit your logic is garbage. The police should have "de"escalated the situation. IMO, the police overreacted. Imagine if your kid got tasered again and again and again and again and even again at the library of his university.

I still think we need to see the other videos from different angles. These will only show up in the court case.