Posted on 11/16/2006 4:57:59 AM PST by radar101
UCPD officers shot a student several times with a Taser inside the Powell Library CLICC computer lab late Tuesday night before taking him into custody.
No university police officers were available to comment further about the incident as of 3 a.m. Wednesday, and no Community Service Officers who were on duty at the time could be reached.
At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.
The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.
The student began to yell "get off me," repeating himself several times.
It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.
UCPD officers confirmed that the man involved in the incident was a student, but did not give a name or any additional information about his identity.
Video shot from a student's camera phone captured the student yelling, "Here's your Patriot Act, here's your fucking abuse of power," while he struggled with the officers.
As the student was screaming, UCPD officers repeatedly told him to stand up and said "stop fighting us." The student did not stand up as the officers requested and they shot him with the Taser at least once more.
"It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life," said David Remesnitsky, a 2006 UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident.
As the student and the officers were struggling, bystanders repeatedly asked the police officers to stop, and at one point officers told the gathered crowd to stand back and threatened to use a Taser on anyone who got too close.
Laila Gordy, a fourth-year economics student who was present in the library during the incident, said police officers threatened to shoot her with a Taser when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number.
Gordy was visibly upset by the incident and said other students were also disturbed.
"It's a shock that something like this can happen at UCLA," she said. "It was unnecessary what they did."
Immediately after the incident, several students began to contact local news outlets, informing them of the incident, and Remesnitsky wrote an e-mail to Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams.
You would probably enjoy Jack Dunphy of NRO if you don't already read him.
The most hilarious part of this episode so far is the LA Times placing UCLA in the wrong part of the city.
Given the current debate on GWOT interrogations, I wonder if you really mean that.
From my short time of reseach on issues, plus a review of the tape - the police were most likely not in the wrong. Sorry, that's my opinion and I doubt if your argument will change it. We'll agree to disagree.
Yeah, that was kind of weird...
Don't believe a word of this story. No comment from the cops and a couple of kids who only saw what happened after the ruckus. I highly doubt Mr. "Now you see the violence inherent in the system, help I'm being repressed!" was coming along peaceably.
The "student" was tresspassing and he knew full well he was tresspassing. Without his card, no one could have known his status and it would be the same as if he stole library fees from every student on campus.
Simple battery is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine up to $2,000 or by imprisonment in a county jail up to 6 months, or by both fine and imprisonment.
Defenses
The use of lawful self-defense or defense of others may be used against a charge of either degree of battery. Where one reasonably believes that they are facing imminent bodily injury, they are allowed to defend themselves with the enough of a degree of force to ward off the imminent injury. Thus, this would make it lawful self-defense. The standard utilized is that of reasonableness. It must be reasonable, by an objective person’s standard, that the threat was there and the means used was reasonable.
###
In the situation we’re discussing there is no indication in any of the stories that there was any reason to believe the student was a threat to the cop or anyone else when he was leaving as instructed by the CSO. The cop had no more authority to grab him as he was leaving than you or I would have had. Cops can’t just wonder around grabbing people, even if you wish they could.
Then he had no right to be there. Period. That's how it works. It's like driving without a license. If you are caught, they charge you with driving without a license if you can't produce one. If you produce one in court, then they lower the charge to not producing a license.
University libraries are expensive and students pay a very large fee for the priveledge of using them. The University has the right to insist that people who are there are able to prove they are there. If you happen to realize you left your card at home (and you need such a card for everything at the University these days) you suck it up and leave.
Note that when the officers returned, the little punk had still not left.
A lot of people would be happy. There are plenty of anarchists and communists and terrorists and gang members who would like nothing more than to see police officers being shot and killed on a regular basis.
And quite frankly, advocating destroying a man's career over an incident like this is tantamount to wanting to see him dead. People quite often commit suicide when their careers are destroyed. Their lives are permanently ruined, whereas this perp's life was temporarily inconvienienced.
You have advocated firing these fine young men based on nothing more than reading this thread and vieiwing a video that, quite frankly, shows a perp with an attitude resisting arrest and otherwise taunting the police to do exactly what they did.
What do you do for a living? Anything? Or do you just sit here online and condemn police officers all day?
Idiots.
Sometimes the truth is there, you just have to know where to find it.
Hmmm...
Tabatabainejad instead encouraged others at the library to join his resistance, and when a crowd began to gather, police used the stun gun on him, Greenstein said.
So he didn't leave quietly, did he?
It is force.
Are you saying someone can just walk up to you and grab you and it isn't using force on you?
LOL
If you really think that, you are really strange.
If someone walked up to you and grabbed you by the arm I'll bet you would think he was using force on you. I don't expect you to admit it, but we both know you would.
You know what I find interesting? The Daily Bruin didn't publish the kid's name. Why not? Didn't they know who he was?
LOL
Very good response.
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