Friday, November 17, 2006

for a chilling video of a UCLA student being tasered by campus cops for not leaving the library fast enough, go here. the video is handheld and probably some kind of camera phone, so there is more audio than there is video. plus, you get to hear other students being threatened with tasering for asking for badges and names. it runs about 5 minutes.
added: the student is now claiming through his lawyer that he felt he was being racially profiled (because he is of Iranian descent) and refused to show his student i.d. for that reason. at UCLA, the cops (who are LAPD, not campus) do random sweeps at night through the library to ensure that only students are using the library. non-students are told to leave. he evidently was told to leave when he wouldn't show i.d, but didn't immediately. when the cops came back by he was on his feet and walking towards the exit. the resulting confrontation began when one of the cops touched him in some manner and he yelled for the cop to not touch him.
two questions:
1) why didn't he just show his i.d. in the first place?
2) why did the cops feel the need to become violent so quickly?
looking through the comments and blogs written by people present it seems that the cops are claiming the student provoked them by resisting and was trying to get the other students to help him. the students present are writing that this was absolutely not the case. they feel he yelled in order to draw attention to what was happening, but not to incite anything.
some people are claiming that is an act of civil disobedience, but i am going to wait until all of the facts are in before assessing any kind of blame or noble act here.
one thing i do know for sure based on the audio is that, if the cops didn't tase him and only "stunned" him, the only difference between tasing and stunning is stunning allows you to scream like crazy (in the movies, people who are tased just freeze up and fall to the ground).
third question:
does anyone besides me feel that the police in general are becoming less like the "thin blue line" and more like the "thick steel curtain" in terms of living within a siege state?
i mean, what prompts a cop to tase a student 7 or more times in a campus library in front of numerous students for no more reason that the feeling that the student was passively resisting arrest?
p.s. on a sidenote, the UC Davis campus police have decided to place decoy backpacks around the campus and keep them under surveillence in order to arrest people who might take them. does this sound like entrapment? this info was in a memo sent out by the campus police (on their website, i believe). are they having a surge in backpack thefts? or are they looking for people to arrest? anyone with information on this, let me know.

i have to say that i've been less than thrilled with the tactics of the Fresno police for some years now. i think that, in general, they do a fine job under heavy scrutiny, but the couple of friends i have on the force do tell me that the cops here have an "us against them" attitude. and "them" includes all civilians. and when jerry dyer opens his fat gob and tells the press that he expects his cops to be ambushed and shot at by gang members they are trying to weed out, i feel he is trying to justify a shoot first mentality.

finally, email Sony and let them know what you think of it releasing a very limited number of new playstations, knowing full well that lines would be blocks long and violence would ensue. while you're at it, call up our local BestBuy and chew them out for knowing they only had 35 of the sets and let the lines grow too long to control. what fucking idiots all the way down the line on this.

10 comments:

Mustang said...

SSM,

1. Glad to hear/read that you seem to feel more better!
2. In general, "tasing" involves firing a weapon that embeds two small darts attached to fine wires running to a power source. This is generally the device seen on TV that fully disables a full grown man, rendering them temporarily "null". Interestingly, this fly-by-wire technology is also quite common on anti-tank weapons...

A hand-held "zapper" is the device that introduces a high amperage charge via skin conduction to the "subject", and generally is just a good attention getter, allowing the recipient some greater degree on awareness, and allowing them to remain vocal.

3. Yes, it is almost universal that law enforcement at all levels (campus, local, State and Federal) are feeling besieged. They are concerned for their safety in the face of more violent criminals that are generally better armed then they are. Unfortunately, they are also human, and as such they fail. Fail to trust everyone, fail to feel comfortable around anyone that is not in uniform, and fail far too often to discriminate between "civilian" and "enemy".

Many researchers see a greater tendency of law enforcement officers to behave as if they were conducting combat operations, rather than law enforcement. The difference is between offensive versus defensive behaviour.

Lastly, as can be seen in the video, there is a tendency to "want their way". The officers wanted that man out, and apparently got caught up in the desire to see him out. They abandoned good judgement, and apparently let their emotions rule their thinking.

It will be interesting to see where it all goes...drinks?

ScarySquirrelMan said...

drinks good. when?

Zonthar said...

Admittedly, I haven't watched the whole video, but I gotta say the student loses some credibility with me from the start, when before he's even tased- or whatever- he's violently screaming "DON'T! TOUCH! MEEE!!", not in a passive, okay-I'm-leaving kind of way, but much more of an I'm-fucking-crazy-and-am-about-to-go-medieval-on-your-ass kind of way. I'm not excusing the cops' overreaction, but no matter how rightly indignant you may be, you don't scream at a cop that way unless you want very bad things to happen to you.

Anonymous said...

This is a classic case of a set up to get publicity for the Mullah’s through thier agents, NIAC being one of them, watch other puppet organizations on Mulla’s payroll like IABA, NIPOC and IMAN to follow . I wouldnt be surprised if IAPAC , folks like Amirahmadi, Titra Parsi, Houghoghi and Babaie to jump on board. This is as free of advertising as it comes.

The campus police was wrong but they were lured into this by a very carefully planned conspiracy. Watch the details get investigated over the next few weeks. How come there was only one student recording? How come the recording did not start from the begining of the incident? Did you hear the student swear at the police? tell them fuck your patriot act? How come his attorney is a 2 time disbarred attorney who was the only attorney trown out of the Federal Court?
Things are never what they seem.

Zonthar said...

You know, anonymous is right- if you count the number of times he gets zapped and multiply it by the number of Masonic lodges within a 100 mile radius of the Denver airport, the total, when held up to a vial of mercury, will read, "Buy a Playstation 3". We are deep inside the looking glass here folks.......

ScarySquirrelMan said...

on a birthday of mine while living in seattle i was forced to walk around a police car that was blocking a crosswalk. before doing so i stopped at his car (in the crosswalk), looked at him and asked with my eyes where the fuck he learned to drive. after i completely left the safety of the cross walk to get past him he turned the corner and slowly followed me. after a few seconds he rolled down his passenger window and asked if me if "we had a problem". i told him he should maybe read his driver's manual on the legality of blocking crosswalks at a red likght. he responded by asking me if i wanted to continue this conversation downtown.
you bet i would have made a loud scene if he had gotten out of his cruiser to arrest me for no more reason than i was looking at him with anything less than absolute deference.
i make no judgement on what happened at the library. i believe it was a case of poor reaction by both parties.
but i don't know for sure.
i agree with steph, though, that police are trained to use several different methods of non-injurious restraint and they should have used them. the student became verbally combative, but did not swing at them or show a weapon or even threaten a weapon or violence.
and conspiracy? the kid sounds to me like a spoiled, entitled brat in terms of claiming racial profiling. but, again, maybe it was the fourth time that week that the cops had singled him out. i don't know.
now, about that vial of mercury...

Zonthar said...

Agreed. I'm not taking the side of the cops- they overreacted badly, and if they really wanted this kid out, there were other ways to do it. I'm just saying- as you did- that it seems to be poor judgment on both sides. My reaction is more about how the whole incident had been portrayed in advance- the buzz I heard before seeing the video painted the student as being meekly cooperative, so I was surprised that the first thing you hear is the student going positively apeshit.

Two very important comments:
"On a birthday of mine" is a funny phrase.

And it's really, really cool that you can say "fuck" with your eyes.

Mustang said...

Oh..that's not the half of it! YOu should see what he says with just his one eyebrow and small cluster of random nose hairs!

M

Zonthar said...

Mustang- who says I haven't? *wink*

ScarySquirrelMan said...

can either of you tell what my eyebrow is saying right about now???