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University Security Guards Taser a Student

  
  

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Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:04 / 16.11.06
The YouTube is here. It's been BoingBoinged and also reported here. If true, it's rather grim. The person filming doesn't really get a good vantage point so almost nothing is seen, which possibly makes it sound worse.

Even taking into account that from what he says the student at the centre of this sounds like a right arsehole (yeah, after being tasered once is precisely the right time to start mouthing off at the guards) it does make you wonder whether these people should have been trained to deal with the situation in a more professional and non-violent manner than this?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:13 / 16.11.06
To be fair, having been tasered probably really, really affects your ability to gauge social situations accurately.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:19 / 16.11.06
And also control your limbs, there was something grimly amusing about the way one guard shouts "Stop hanging down like that! If you keep hanging down I will tazer you again!" Because, the body responds well to have a strong electrical current passed through it. Did this guard not have any training at any point as to what the likely effects of the weapon on someone he attacked with it would be?
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
20:22 / 16.11.06
The comments underneath that video are the most horrifying things I've read in a good while. Holy goose-stepping authority junkies, Batman...
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
20:28 / 16.11.06
In the real PD (and many prison guard programs) you are required to be hit with a taser before you are allowed to carry one.

I doubt that campus police have the same rules.

That being said, the guy in this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CoLcIJo3TE&NR
seems to be a little dazed but able to sit up after being hit.

From the news article linked from the youtube video it seems like the guy was pissed at being kicked out, and when one of the campus cops put a hand on him he started shouting. Not really the time to pull a taser in my opinion, but I won't make a call on this one myself without more information.
 
 
The Falcon
21:13 / 16.11.06
I wish I had a taser.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
21:55 / 16.11.06
The comments underneath that video are the most horrifying things I've read in a good while.

Are you kidding? That stuff is comedy gold. I especially like someone with the screenname "Machiavelli666" accusing someone of being a cold hearted bastard.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
00:57 / 17.11.06
Even taking into account that from what he says the student at the centre of this sounds like a right arsehole (yeah, after being tasered once is precisely the right time to start mouthing off at the guards)

I think I must be reacting after having seen the video just a minute ago, which made me so incredibly angry I literally can't see properly, but what the FUCK????

Tell me that if you were being arrested and unlawfully assaulted for not producing a student card, you wouldn't be trying to draw attention to it by telling the police exactly what it is that they were doing, and its relationship to war/terror/law/racism. That is precisely what I would be doing. If you listen to what he's saying, that's what he's doing.

"A right arsehole." What world are you living in where people should just give up and accept racial vilification quietly?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
05:39 / 17.11.06
Hmmm, I presume the police started with the 'racial vilification' at some point after I stopped watching. And I doubt that in a similar situation I would be saying anything coherent at all, let alone trying to win my freedom by trying to deconstruct the police's belief system. For my money the student should have shouted "now we see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being oppressed!"

And I'm sorry I'm not a hard-core freedom fighter like you. I suppose working in a library here has made me oversensitive to people ignoring the rules. Don't believe the guy needed to be tasered at all though. Whether these were genuine police or just campus security they should have been better trained than that, but then no-one knows in detail what happened beforehand.
 
 
stabbystabby
06:28 / 17.11.06
objecting to tasering makes people a hardcore freedom fighter now? wtf?
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
07:48 / 17.11.06
Tell me that if you were being arrested and unlawfully assaulted for not producing a student card, you wouldn't be trying to draw attention to it by telling the police exactly what it is that they were doing, and its relationship to war/terror/law/racism.

I sure as hell wouldn't be doing that. Apparently Our Damp Lady wouldn't either. Besides, I don't think he was being arrested, I think they just told him to leave and he refused. If they were arresting him it probably would've been over a lot quicker.

Maybe I'm jaded, or it's just different here, but being unjustly harrassed by cops is nothing novel and certainly not worth getting tazed over.

I've seen lots of people object strenuously while being arrested or assaulted by police and nine times out of ten they're full of shit. "You don't have the right to do this" or "you're not allowed" or "you won't get away with this" yeah yeah yeah. Pissing on the sidewalk is illegal, throwing a bottle at a bar window is illegal, screaming "don't touch me" and shoving a policeman counts as assault, and if you do these things and refuse to go with the cops when they ask nicely (or even if they're assholes about it) they just might drag you away after tazing you, and they are allowed to do that.

Nine times out of ten, in my experience. Or at least six out of seven. Something like that. But since I have no idea what happened before everything went nasty at the library, I can't really tell if the police (they were "real" police, apparently) were justified in zapping the poor guy.

I'm fairly confident the following zaps weren't called for, though, and I'm really confused at the "get up or I'll taser you again" line. Couldn't they have just dragged him out? There were at least a couple of officers there. Shouldn't have been too hard.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
08:01 / 17.11.06
Ah. Just read the article. He was asked to leave because he couldn't produce a student ID, he refused, the police were called in, he still refused to leave. Finally he starts to leave, at which point a policeman grabs his arm. No funny stuff there, I imagine they were just going to escort him out. It's happened to me a few times while being kicked out of some place or other. They are allowed (encouraged, in fact) to do that. Kid screams "don't touch me". Maybe he sort of pushed one of them, maybe he just looked like he was about to, maybe he just jerked his arm out of the officer's hand, maybe he just had the wrong kind of face. I can't tell what happened from the video or the article.

Very ugly situation, though.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:04 / 17.11.06
I don't think he was being arrested, I think they just told him to leave and he refused.

According to the reports, he was on his way out when the "real" cops arrived, but they used physical force against him and then tasered him. At a guess, the student cops told him to leave, he told them to piss off, they called the real cops. At the introduction of real cops, he decided to leave under his own steam, but the real cops, arriving without an adequate sitrep, used physical coercion, he resisted and was tased.

After that, utter nonsense. You don't hit somebody with a taser unless they are actively physically resisting you, and there is a threat to your physical safety that justifies escalation. Five policemen should not have any trouble moving a single student out of a building, even if that student is limp but not actively resisting.

Further, you can hear one policeman threatening to use his taser on another student who is asking him for his name and number - which, as I understand it, she is entirely within her rights to do. Five policeman managed to lose control of a situation in which one student without a library card was leaving a library. That's _lamentable_ policing.

On racial vilification - well, we don't hear any racial abuse. The student is apparently Iranian-American and may or may not be a Muslim, but whether either of those factors was apparent or a factor in the decision to electrocute him repeatedly despite him shouting that he had a medical condition is unclear.

So, let's see how rampant the apologism can get. Who doesn't think the police involved should lose their badges? Should be severely disciplined? Should go through a disciplinary process?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:11 / 17.11.06
I also don't believe tasers are supposed to be used as a means of coercing people to do anything are they? Now, we don't see the guy between taser one and taser two so maybe he was able to move around and then started hanging down, but I would have thought that if you taser someone you should be expecting to carry them out of the building, not get huffy with them for not moving.

Certainly in the UK I know it is supposed to be illegal for a policeperson to do anything to stop people taking notes of their numbers but then, as they seem to have de facto immunity from prosecution for murder making complaints about PC whatever isn't going to get you very far.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:12 / 17.11.06
I'm going to suggest moving this thread to the Switchboard.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:25 / 17.11.06
The YouTube picture quality is poor but it looks like the guy is not white, which makes me feel that this is veering uncomfortably in the same direction as those two Indian guys that were chucked off the plane in the summer.

But according to a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001, a charge of three to five seconds can result in immobilization for five to 15 minutes, which would mean that Tabatabainejad could have been physically unable to stand when the officers demanded that he do so.

"It is a real mistake to treat a Taser as some benign thing that painlessly brings people under control," said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney at the ACLU of Southern California...

...During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would "get Tased too." At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser.

Such a threat of the use of force by a law enforcement officer in response to a request for a badge number is an "illegal assault," Eliasberg said.

"It is absolutely illegal to threaten anyone who asks for a badge â€" that's assault," he said.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
08:47 / 17.11.06
Five policeman managed to lose control of a situation in which one student without a library card was leaving a library. That's _lamentable_ policing.

Pretty piss poor policing, agreed.

If the first tazing we hear on the video is the first tazing that occured (I think it is, you can see everyone jump up when the poor kid starts screaming), then the police were ordering him to stand up (presumably so that they could throw him out) before he was tazed. The kid isn't in the picture though, so maybe he was gathering his things up from the floor when he first got tazed? Maybe he was just sitting there being lippy? Kid screams "don't touch me", cops are telling him to stand up, zap zap zap, "stand up or you'll get another", zap zap zap. Like I said, ugly situation. Wish I could see how full of "resistance" he was before the initial tazing.

Further, you can hear one policeman threatening to use his tazer on another student who is asking him for his name and number - which, as I understand it, she is entirely within her rights to do.

Is that the bit towards the end, near the 5min 15sec mark? The guy who gets threatened looks very upset (understandable), and the policeman tells him to move "over there" or he'll get tazed too. Most likely unnecessary, and also a pretty asshole-ish thing to do, but within the policeman's rights.

I'd be surprised if the cops left without giving up the requested information.

As far as dicipline goes, the police very obviously did not handle the situation well and used unnecessary force. I don't know what the typical disciplinary action taken at times like this is, but I'm sure there's some sort of protocol to follow. Whether or not it will actually be followed is anyone's guess.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:10 / 17.11.06
Most likely unnecessary, and also a pretty asshole-ish thing to do, but within the policeman's rights.

Really? Sorry, but could you tell me where exactly it is within an LA policeman's rights to use a tazer, or threaten to use a tazer, on a person for not moving when told, if that is what happened, in the total absence of physical threat? I'm not familiar with that ordnance.

From the ACLU:

"It is a real mistake to treat a Taser as some benign thing that painlessly brings people under control," said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.

"The Taser can be incredibly violent and result in death," Eliasberg said.

According to an ACLU report, 148 people in the United States and Canada have died as a result of the use of Tasers since 1999.

During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would "get Tased too." At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser.

Such a threat of the use of force by a law enforcement officer in response to a request for a badge number is an "illegal assault," Eliasberg said.

"It is absolutely illegal to threaten anyone who asks for a badge [number]," that's assault," he said.

(Oops - sorry - missed that this was quoted above)
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
09:33 / 17.11.06
Really? Sorry, but could you tell me where exactly it is within an LA policeman's rights to use a tazer, or threaten to use a tazer, on a person for not moving when told, if that is what happened, in the total absence of physical threat?

Well, if the subject is on the verge of interferring with police duties, and is also obviously agitated, and the policeman in question feels the subject may become agitated enough to take his interference a step too far in the wrong direction, I would be surprised if he is not allowed to order someone to get out of the way or be moved with force.

Did the policeman actually feel threatened? Probably not. Was the guy actually in the way of police performing their duties? Probably not. But the officer can certainly claim that he felt the dude was a potential threat, and that he felt the dude was going to be in the way. And, unfortunately, that's his call to make, truthfully or otherwise. Maybe the video will convince someone who matters that the threat was not really needed, but I doubt it.

I've witnessed several situations like that. I've recieved the same threat more than once. So frequently do I see this, in fact, that I have a hard time believing officers are not allowed to make that threat under the right circumstances, and guess who gets to be the judge of what constitutes "the right circumstances". Not me. Or you either, I guess.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:44 / 17.11.06
So, hold on - you've seen policemen threatening non-violent protestors with tazers so often that you reckon it _must_ be standard protocol?

That's interesting, but just to make sure I understand - you don't actually know for sure under which circumstances a member of the LAPD is entitled to use a taser? You would simply be suprised if it was not a situation in which a member of the LAPD did use a taser, just as you would be surprised if the LAPD left the scene of this particular tasering without providing their names and badge numbers to whoever requested them?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:13 / 17.11.06
Sorry - called away.

I think that's possible, but I think it's also likely that the rules around acceptable use of tasers are at best muddily defined and at worst being flouted. Outside police states, it is generally considered very bad form to use tasers where there is not an immediate risk of violence, and an immediate risk of violence the police would not be able to deal with. Using a tazer on somebody who is fleeing is often considered power form. Using it on someone who is handcuffed, or is not armed or physically aggressive - well, that would normally be comparable to hitting somebody in cuffs or who is not armed or physically aggressive with a baton - assault.

Taser Internationl takes a very firm line on people who are considered "vulnerable subjects" - which may include this fellow and his unnamed "medical condition":

MYTH: VULNERABLE SUBJECTS

This is a description that is often used in the media and put forth by special interests groups when describing individuals who die in-custody. But who exactly are these people and why are they so vulnerable? Did the TASER device make these individuals vulnerable, or were they in a severe medical crisis prior to law enforcement intervention? Let’s be very clear, these are unfortunate and tragic deaths – and the grieving families are dealing with intense and deeply personal agony. However, one cannot ignore that the reason these people are considered “vulnerable” is that the majority of them chose to use illicit drugs—oftentimes in toxic quantities. Now that we know why they are vulnerable, why is the ACLU-NC not outraged by the drug dealers who gave them the drugs in the first place? Surely without these drugs most rational people would agree that these people may be alive today.

I think that pretty much clears that up.

However, Taser International also says in the product safety advice for their product:

Continuous Exposure Risks. When practical, avoid prolonged or continuous exposure(s) to the TASER
device's electrical discharge. In some circumstances, in susceptible people, it is conceivable that the stress
and exertion of extensive repeated, prolonged, or continuous application(s) of the TASER device may
contribute to cumulative exhaustion, stress, and associated medical risk(s).

Dealing particularly with "drive" mode (where the taser is used as a stun gun rather than fired), it adds:

Scarring. Use of a TASER device, especially in drive (or touch) stun mode, can cause marks, friction
abrasions, and/or scarring that may be permanent depending on individual susceptibilities or circumstances
surrounding TASER device use and exposure.

Also,

Control and Restrain Immediately. Begin control and restraint procedures as soon as it is reasonably safe
to do so in order to minimize the total duration of exertion and stress experienced by the subject.

Since the man was on the ground and cuffed, I'm not seeing where the taser remains a relevant tool.

Also, right at the top:

Avoid Torturous or Other Misuse.

In this case, a taser was being used as a threat to punish non-compliance, whether that non-compliance was intentional or unintentional.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
11:03 / 17.11.06
Just to explain my racial vilification comment earlier, the student is Iranian-American and his name is Mostafa Tabatabainejad. He is a UCLA student. I think it's safe to say this is clearly not a case of your average student being asked to leave a library and resisting.

If you were, say, printing out an essay at the library, or had just dropped in to borrow a book, and had forgotten your student card, and were told to leave when you couldn't prpduce it, what would you do? If you were Iranian and were clearly being asked to leave because of your appearance, wouldn't you argue?
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
13:12 / 17.11.06
The full video is just under seven minutes, and demonstrates once again that evil - or at least, stupidity in action - gets oddly boring once you've got past the fact that you're furious. You're kind of waiting for another outrage. It's only in the last seconds that one of the officers quite clearly threatens to taser someone else. I couldn't make out racial abuse, but I'm notoriously bad at picking words out of recorded babble.

Screw up from start to finish - and a totally culpable one. They were using the taser effectively as a cattle prod, trying to use pain to move him along.

The statement that he has a medical condition is absolutely clear, although I can imagine that almost everyone who is tasered says that - I sure as hell would. I'm not sure you can know what else you might do, though - radical assaults on the nervous system like that take different people in different ways. My old dojo had a policy that if anyone was knocked unconscious with a nerve strike, or more particularly went down to a strangle, where the blood is prevented from reaching the brain, everyone cleared the room except the teachers (and obviously the unconscious person) - because occasionally, people come up furious and what you might call fighting drunk. I find the cry of 'this is your justice' has that tone to it - burned, angry, blasted, sad, not entirely sensible.

It seems quite clear that there should be a disciplinary process/review/whatever, but also that there may be a criminal case. It seems entirely possible the student also has a civil case against the UCPD, the university, or the state - I don't know how that works.

Disco -

I think it's safe to say this is clearly not a case of your average student being asked to leave a library and resisting.

No, it's pretty blatant profiling/fear. That there's no audible abuse doesn't disguise the probability that this is a situation with a significant racial component.

If you were Iranian and were clearly being asked to leave because of your appearance, wouldn't you argue?

I might - but I would expect things to get bad pretty quickly thereafter. I'd expect that if I did this, and I'm a 'safe-looking' white man.

Actually, what amazes me about this is that UCLA doesn't have a better system of ID checks than a card you apparently don't need to get in and which seemingly isn't backed up with a terminal where you can check someone's identity on site. My gym has more security, and my gym isn't one of the top educational institutions in a country which reckons it's under siege.

Haus:

So, let's see how rampant the apologism can get.

That's a little harsh. It's a done deal that Barbelith for the most part is going to look at this as an obvious example of police brutality and over-reaction. We're not, by and large, huge fans of the law here.

But it shouldn't be unthinkable to defend the officers on the ground - we don't know, yet, what happened, and while I agree that it looks as if they were way out of line, it's not completely clear. At the same time, getting too angry about them lets their seniors off the hook, and that's not right at all.

As with the Menezes shooting, I can't help but feel the blame lies further up the chain than the guys who pull the trigger. If you tell a line officer "attend the scene of a disturbance, Arab-American man acting strangely", you're going to get a panic-stations response, because they've been primed - by the President, by every mainstream news network, by the entertainment industry - to believe that could mean a terror strike or an ideologically motivated action of some sort.

But even without that, police at US educational institutions are (perhaps rightly) acutely aware of American's history of school and workplace shootings - I hadn't realised how many there have been. [more and more]. The Secret Service has a "Safe Schools Initiative. The report I link to (which is weird reading, by the way) is based on a study of 37 school shootings - and it was written in 2000.

I believe this was a shameful incident. I also think it was easy to understand. I don't see those as being in opposition. And I think TG's point, in practical terms, is well made - if you're being arrested and you don't want to get roughed up, yelling about your rights may be a bad move. The fact that that is in and of itself and indictment of the system doesn't alter its accuracy.

So while I agree more with you than with TG, I think crying 'apologist' is a step away from useful discourse.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
13:16 / 17.11.06
(Responding to Mr Disco)

At the time I hadn't read a report with the guys name so wasn't aware of the racial angle.

If you were Iranian and were clearly being asked to leave because of your appearance, wouldn't you argue?

Well, that's a bit difficult, as he did not have his ID Card. Now maybe the staff used some other means to verify his identity or maybe they didn't, we don't know. We have not got the full story here yet.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:28 / 17.11.06
But it shouldn't be unthinkable to defend the officers on the ground - we don't know, yet, what happened, and while I agree that it looks as if they were way out of line, it's not completely clear.

They were striking a 23-year old lying on the ground, handcuffed with his hands behind his back, having presumably ascertained that he was not carrying any explosive devices, with a taser. Could somebody give me a way in which it is thinkable to defend that conduct?

At the same time, getting too angry about them lets their seniors off the hook, and that's not right at all.

I agree that it's not right at all that getting too angry with them lets their seniors off the hook - I believe that it's possible to do both. To look at the de Menezes case - there we have officers who made a series of mistakes which culminated in the death of an innocent man. One can be angry with the failure of the officers to act efficiently, but one can quite happily at the same time be much more angry with the culture of bungling and cover-up that the case revealed.

However, in this case even the most dull-witted peace office must have realised that no immediate threat to life was being averted by striking a student with what you described quite accurately as a cattle prod. I would be very surprised, to borrow Tuna Ghost's phrase, if in doing so the law officers in question were either attempting to protect the public safety or strictly obey instructions from on high. As such, it seems both appropriate and perfectly credible to keep one's anger options open, for the moment.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
14:49 / 17.11.06
This latest report from the uni newspaper suggests the guy was tasered four times in the 'drive stun' setting (not as bad as the firing wires and then frying somebody but still pretty nasty) and that Tabatabainejad had already been restrained before zap number 3.

UCPD Assistant Chief of Police Jeff Young has said that during Tuesday's incident, officers likely had no way of knowing whether Tabatabainejad was armed,

Riiiight. Who knows, he may have even been intending to suicide bomb the library after returning his books!

There's now also this opinion piece which is either genuinely or maliciously clueless: But attempts to paint this as an issue of racial profiling really stretch the facts. I – who by no means look middle Eastern – have been asked to produce my BruinCard by CSOs.

Yet no-one is really claiming that the problem is that the guy was asked to show his card. It's the disproportionate way it was handled afterwards (which this guy brushes off as unimportant) which is the key problem. I loose all sympathy when the piece ends with a request for Rodney King jokes to be emailed in. Looking at his other articles the columnist takes a fairly strong right-wing perspective so supporting the right of police to beat up people who aren't him isn't that much of a surprise.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
15:37 / 17.11.06
Having read as much of the online reports as I can I feel like I can form an opinion on this.

Without first hand knowledge of the situation I can't say whether or not the first tasing was justified. We don't have clear footage of what went on right before the first time he was tased. If he did freak out when one of the officers grabbed his arm he could have shoved the officer, or even said something threatening. We don't know.

So, there is room for the benefit of the doubt with regards to the first time he was tased.

Anything that happened after he was on the ground, especially after he was handcuffed is inexcusable. Threatening bystanders is also inexcusable. It is one thing to tell people to clear out of the way, it is another to tell people to clear out of the way or they might 'get some too'.

Investigation obviously. If the officers get off without any disciplinary action (the one who kept tasing the student after he was cuffed should be gone) then a huge injustice has been done.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
16:00 / 17.11.06
They were striking a 23-year old lying on the ground, handcuffed with his hands behind his back, having presumably ascertained that he was not carrying any explosive devices, with a taser. Could somebody give me a way in which it is thinkable to defend that conduct?

How is his age relevant?

I don't know whether they'd ascertained whether or not he was carrying explosives; I would really hope they had, although you may recall that in the aftermath of the Menezes shooting, Manchester Police did restrain someone who was thought to be a suicide bomber using a taser, somewhat to the consternation of the Met, who felt that a) that was a bit pointed and b) that was very silly given that the electric shock could easily have set off a bomb had there been one. To which Manchester responded that there wasn't one, and they hadn't just shot an electrician in the back of the head.

What I'm saying is not that there was any reason for them to believe that he was, but rather that I cannot imagine that it wasn't in their minds as they came in through the door that this could be a really bad scene. As indeed, it was, but not for the reasons they were thinking of.

I'm not defending the conduct. That was the bit where I said I think this is shameful. I'm defending a poster on this board because I want to hear what that poster has to say as much as I want to hear you, despite (or possibly because of) the fact that I'm broadly in agreement with you.

I'm also able to see how a line officer acting on minimal information, feeling (rightly or not) that he has a duty to protect his constituency, and possibly also afraid on a personal level, might significantly over-react. The outcome is monstrous; I don't accept that the person is automatically also monstrous. More, I don't accept that the monstrousness of the situation makes uncertainty about it 'apologist'. That's Bush's line, after all, and it's no more valid here than it is when he touts it.

in this case even the most dull-witted peace office must have realised that no immediate threat to life was being averted

More than likely. And yet, just as it's not easy to formulate thoughts after you've been tasered, gassed, or knocked out, it's not easy to be rational when you're in a tense situation whose parameters you didn't know when you went in. Rationally, they should have calmed as the threat level came down. (In fact, they should have been in control and collected when they went in, most especially if they were dealing with a shooter, hostage taker, or bomber. The last thing that situation needs is nervous coppers.) But I don't think that's how it works - I think they were still operating on the adrenalin from coming into the building. More than that, they were suddenly in a very different kind of bad - they were about a hair away from triggering a massive civil disturbance, and I think they must have realised that. Smart move would have been to tone it down, loosen up. They weren't smart.

The thing is that that situation is one which you have to be both reasonably bright and very well-practiced and trained for - and those kinds of people probably don't stay long in line law enforcement. They move up or out.

I'm really not a Johann Hari fan (I think he's an idiot, actually) but this article caught my eye a while back: The children turning up at Kid's Company were born into households where the mother was so stressed she couldn't calm herself, never mind calm her baby. "So these children have underdeveloped calming mechanisms and underdeveloped frontal lobes," she explains. "The neuoronal pathways that are supposed to operate to help kids calm down just aren't operating robustly enough. On top of that, because they have grown up feeling constantly in danger, their bodies are flooded with abnormally high levels of adrenaline and cortisol that keep them constantly tense and primed to blow. So it turns out when these kids tell me they couldn't stop themselves, they mean it. They're not morally flawed - their terrible childhoods have actually left them neurologically impaired."

It strikes me as entirely possible that the same is true of our OTT coppers. If we should be seeing young offenders as damaged - which I find incredibly easy to believe - the same must apply. For extra 'how fucked up is this?' value, look at this: Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat [...] The UK prison trial at Aylesbury jail showed that when young men there were fed multivitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, the number of violent offences they committed in the prison fell by 37%. [...] And this week, new claims were made that fish oil had improved behaviour and reduced aggression among children with some of the most severe behavioural difficulties in the UK.

Care to take a guess at what UCPD cops and their LAPD counterparts eat? Shall we write and ask? Junk Food and violence... maybe that's why the US has a higher level of guncrime than Canada. Maybe Supersize Me and Bowling For Columbine are about the same thing.
 
 
Mon Oncle Ignatius
16:25 / 17.11.06
For background to the use of Tasers by police, deaths related to their use, and the promotion of their adoption by serving and former officers employed by Taser International, see this article.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:27 / 17.11.06
That's Bush's line, after all, and it's no more valid here than it is when he touts it.


Now, Nick, if I were you I imagine I would be demanding an apology for that, rather than reading with interest the revival of the Twinkie defence. Play fair.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:51 / 17.11.06
And yet, just as it's not easy to formulate thoughts after you've been tasered, gassed, or knocked out, it's not easy to be rational when you're in a tense situation whose parameters you didn't know when you went in.

So - pop quiz. How many people here believe that being a person who is on the ground, handcuffed, and tasered, possibly also making you concerned for your own life due to some as-yet-unidentified medical condition (and 23, which is relevant because it means that the most logical reason for him to be in a university library is because he is a student, and not a terrorist, the argument for which so far has been his brown skin) is precisely analogous, in terms of how hard it is to collect your thoughts and express yourself calmly, than being one of several people armed with firearms, pepper spray and tasers entering a building knowing that the only thing the target has done so far is to be loud and verbally abusive, rather than the more traditional response to discovery of the hardened terrorist of pulling a weapon or exploding?

Only, I just don't get this. I will go further, and I will say that I don't get that we have to understand the pressure the people with the guns and the tasers are under when these unfortunate things happen to brown-skinned people, because, well, nothing makes people nervous like brown skin, as a reason to cut them some slack.

So, these policemen don't get enough omega 3 oils and they are unable to maintain emotional clarity in the face of brown-skinned people? Fine. Expel them from the force, try them for assault, make sure they get plenty of Chubby Chuna in prison or in subsequent careers in which they are not allowed to carry weapons (and bear in mind that it's quite likely that they were also carrying guns - UCPD officers are armed as a matter of course). I have absolutely no problem with that, and I am happy to understand the cock off them while they work to rehabilitate themselves. Right now, though, I am not interested in being told that they aren't monstrous - whether or not they are monstrous people is irrelevant to whether or not their behaviour is criminal.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
17:13 / 17.11.06
Nick, if I were you I imagine I would be demanding an apology for that

I haven't asked you for an apology. I've objected to your reaction to another poster. I'm not comparing you to Bush, I'm comparing your argument - which appears to me to have the structure: Act A is quite apparently so awful that seeking justification or expressing uncertainty as to the moral situation is unacceptable - with the structure of the Bush administration's position on 9/11. I mistrust both, and I see a similarity of shape, while overtly acknowledging other differences.

How many people here believe that being a person who is on the ground, handcuffed, and tasered, possibly also making you concerned for your own life due to some as-yet-unidentified medical condition [...] s precisely analogous, in terms of how hard it is to collect your thoughts and express yourself calmly, than being one of several people armed with firearms, pepper spray and tasers entering a building knowing that the only thing the target has done so far is to be loud and verbally abusive....

At no point did I suggest this. I said that both were situations in which you might do stupid or counter-intuitive things.

23, which is relevant because it means that the most logical reason for him to be in a university library is because he is a student, and not a terrorist, the argument for which so far has been his brown skin

I did not suggest he was a terrorist or a school shooter, I suggested that the policemen approaching him had to have been afraid that he might be, because these are the situations they exist to confront, and which they must - if they are in any way sane - be afraid of. It's not that he has brown skin and therefore is a terrorist; it's that the worst possible scenario which fits the few facts available is that he might be. I'm not talking about rationality - because I don't believe there's a great deal of that on offer in that recording. I'm talking about totally stupid irrationality. I believe an appreciation of what was going on in everyone's head is key to stopping it happening again.

I don't get that we have to understand the pressure the people with the guns and the tasers are under when these unfortunate things happen to brown-skinned people, because, well, nothing makes people nervous like brown skin, as a reason to cut them some slack.

Again, I didn't say that. I suggested that while I find this incident nauseeating, I don't think it's useful to refuse to consider the perceptions of the people at fault on the ground, and I don't think that it's useful to revile the whole thing so much that TG's comments merit an accusation of being an apologist - and nor yet do mine.

Right now, though, I am not interested in being told that they aren't monstrous - whether or not they are monstrous people is irrelevant to whether or not their behaviour is criminal.

Criminal behaviour is something to be discussed and looked at with a view to understanding and preventing it. When we look at other kinds of criminal behaviour, I, at least, try to look past the crime and understand the root - as with the Young Offenders. I don't believe it's helpful to revile them, especially if it emerges that their crime is a consequence of a systemic problem, the more if it transpires that they are unable - as you might - to resist that urge because of faulty wiring in the noggin. You sound rageful in a way I simply do not believe you would be about criminals of another sort. I said 'monstrous' because that's the impression you give: that you're responding to something you view as monstrous, rather than something you view as 'criminal'.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:15 / 17.11.06
And this is what I was questioning in Tuna Ghost's response - that the use of force here was within the rights of the UCPD, and that the use of threats of force against a non-violent citizen was also within the rights of the UCPD. I had established to my satisfaction that this was based on supposition rather than knowledge of the written codes of practice, and was then suggesting that his statement - that he had seen things happen so often that he would be very surprised if they were not standard practice - might instead reflect a fuzzy understanding of the regulations on the part of the police themselves.

This entire and quite lengthy conversation happened after my apologism crack, so I don't quite understand why you felt it was necessary to compare me to President Bush - if I was seeking to silence him, I was going about it very much the wrong way, clearly, by asking him questions about things he had said. I suck as a neocon.

Back on tasers - the drive stun mode is achieved by removing the firing cartridge from the taser - so, it just becomes an on-contact charge deliverer. You don't get the breaking of the flesh that you can expect from hitting someone with the taser needle, but I believe the charge is much the same in intensity. Drive stun mode does not lock muscles - it isn't a circuit but a jolt. It just hurts. So, at no point was a need identified to immobilise the subject.

This is significant. At no point, it appears, was he shot with a taser. He was simply caused pain with it. The aim was not to immobilise him while he was cuffed, or to prevent him from offering violence through physical immobilisation.

Further, if the police had believed there to be a serious threat, the taser would have been set and used in probe mode. You do this if somebody who is armed or whom you believe to be armed with a knife or other weapon is within 21 feet of you, I believe - the time taken to cover that distance being the time it takes to clear, draw, aim and shoot a firearm with accuracy at a moving target. If there was any suggestion that Tabatabainejad (whom, incidentally, I'd rather we didn't call an Arab-American, unless we make it clear that this might have been the apprehension of the police, in which case we may as well cut to the chase and say Arab) was a serious threat to safety, he should have been hit by a probe taser shot and cuffed. This did not happen. It's possible that the police could not get a clear shot and heroically close with somebody they believed to be an armed and dangerous assailant, for fear of - um - briefly immobilising an innocent bystander, but I think it's reasonably unlikely.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:25 / 17.11.06
I said 'monstrous' because that's the impression you give: that you're responding to something you view as monstrous, rather than something you view as 'criminal'.

Be fair, Nick. You said "monstrous" because that's the impression that you took. There's a difference. I didn't use the word monstrous, and I don't think I would - rhetorically, it fails because it fails to punch up the shared humanity of the police and victim.

I am looking, as far as I can tell, at an act of violence, the best excuse offered up for which so far has been that it is racially motivated, by the instruments of the law, from whom we are I think entitled to expect better, in which the technology they have been given to uphold the law was used in a manner that appears not only in itself illegal but in violation of the tenets of the law they claim by their apparel to represent. Does that honk me off more than somebody pinching my wallet, say? Yes, it does.

So, let's look at criminal behaviour as something to be understood in order to prevent it. I say that if the police involved are found to have committed assault, they have disgraced their badge and should be stripped of it, and then subjected to trial as the law allows. This will conveniently remind other people of the dangers that accompany the joys of electroplay. I do not think that "confronted with brown skin, they foolishly - but understandably - assumed he must be a terrorist, but then - foolishly but understandably - decided to fuck with him rather than immobilise him using a taser probe shot" is particularly useful, unless you are arguing that the authorities who hired these policemen were remiss in their duty not to hire people incompetent to do their job and should also be disciplined and removed from their posts if found to be culpable. If that's where you're going, I'm right there with you, kidder.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
17:29 / 17.11.06
The incident didn't take place until after they had closed and touched him, as I understand it.

For your scenario to then apply, Haus, they would have had to run 21 feet away from him as soon as he did whatever prompted them to take him down and fired from there.

If he appeared peaceful, and then flipped his shit once they put a hand on him the 21 foot training would become moot.

Again, I will not defend their use of the weapons once he was subdued and on the ground, but the initial reaction to taser him could have been justified.
 
  

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