Register – Thursday 16th November 2006:
According to a report on the university’s Daily Bruin, the incident occured at around 11.30 pm on Tuesday when security officers at the Powell Library CLICC computer lab “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“.
“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.”
The video shows the tasered ne’er-do-well shouting “Here’s your Patriot Act, here’s your fucking abuse of power”, while refusing to get up. Shortly thereafter, the cops tasered him a second time for his trouble.
UCPD officers later confirmed that the man at the receiving end of the righteous tasering was a student, but didn’t name him or give any further details.
Update: This one is nearly off the irony scale. Three UCLA cops were recently given “Tazer Awards” for subduing a mental patient earlier this year! Way to go guys, treat yourself to an extra donut! Maybe if you’re lucky Santa will bring you some quadriplegic kids to zap!
Update II: The victim in this attack, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, is accusing the UCLA police of racial profiling…
Associated Press – November 17, 2006:
A student who was shocked by a campus police officer’s Taser gun after he refused to show ID at a UCLA library thought he was being singled out by the officer because of his Middle Eastern appearance, his lawyer said.
Yagman said his client declined to show his school ID because he thought he was being targeted for his appearance. His family is of Iranian descent.
Update III: It appears the UCLA doesn’t trust its internal police force, as the university has ordered an outside and independent probe of this attack.
Los Angeles Times – November 18, 2006:
Hoping to calm the furor created when UCLA police used a Taser to subdue a student studying in Powell Library, the university’s acting chancellor announced Friday that a veteran Los Angeles law enforcement watchdog would head up an independent investigation of the incident.
Norman Abrams said he ordered the probe after the university received numerous calls and e-mails from parents and alumni raising concerns about the officers’ actions during the videotaped Tuesday night arrest, which has been widely seen on TV news and the YouTube website.
“I want to assure them that the UCLA campus is a safe environment. Student safety and treatment are of paramount concern at UCLA,” Abrams said. “We plan to move ahead promptly with a complete and unbiased review.”
Abrams said Bobb has a proven track record looking into allegations of police misconduct, including the Rodney King beating and more recently the riots at the L.A. County jail system.
For everyone who thinks the cops did the right thing, you might want to read this…
One of the issues Bobb’s investigation will examine is whether the officers complied with the university police rules for using Tasers.
Several local police agencies — including the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — allow officers to use Tasers only if a suspect poses a physical threat or is acting combatively.
The sheriff’s policies expressly say deputies can’t use Tasers simply to move someone
#161 “Your implication is that if the police give a citizen an order then it must be obeyed.”
I gave a very detailed list of what orders must be followed, only an idiot would infer that I meant something else… oh, well that explains the confusion.
“You can’t cite any statutory law requiring a citizen to obey a policeman’s orders.”
This sentence has two possible meanings, and you’re either poor at writing, or are writing to purposefully obscure your meaning. I can cite statutory law that there are orders that must be followed, however there is no law stating that ALL orders must be followed, regardless of legality.
I was responding to the first meaning, since no one claimed that all orders, regardless of legality, must be followed. The first mention of the topic is you, when you said:
“I know you are going to argue that when the police tell you to do something, he must obey.”
So you created your own argument here, in a classic strawman, which you continue to use even though you have been told, more than once, that you are wrong.
So, again, just for the love of typing: NO ONE MADE THE CLAIM, SO THERE’S NO NEED TO CITE LAWS. Soooo, does that make me racist again?
Since there are NO statutes that compel free citizens to arbitrarily follow police orders, here are two cases where force and cause of arrest are discussed in the Tenth and Fourth circuits.
http://www.kscourts.org/ca10/cases/2006/02/04-2062.htm
http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/021761.P.pdf
(The civilians won in both cases. Also not, I put links to them so you can check them out)
162, “You can’t cite any statutory law requiring a citizen to obey a policeman’s orders.”
This sentence has two possible meanings, and you’re either poor at writing, or are writing to purposefully obscure your meaning
If you see two possible meanings then your split personality is acting up again. There is one and one only. – You, are incapable of referencing any law that makes a free citizen subservient to the whims of a policeman. It is not a trick question, only a challenge to the saliva splattered claim that we must obey the police. I won’t reference every one, but you can get the drift.
4, …maybe next time they will show some respect for the law. Or be more civil with the officer, perhaps saying “Yes, office
19, These cops did absolutely nothing wrong. even threatening to taze the other students wasn’t wrong.
29, That guy was an a-hole… big time. He deserved everything dished out to him… he practically demanded it.
31, Stupid ass pompous college kids asking for badge numbers.
34, Boy you people live in a fantasy land. #1 rule, the guy with the gun is always right.
45, You have to do what they say, though because they are the cops.
72, That guy was a dumbass. Maybe he will consider using proper behavior next time.
103, Common sense dictates you should do as he says because the risk of him just losing his cool and shooting you is just not worth it in most situations, and the only think at stake here was the student’s pride.
106, I will also repeat that every argument in favour of that kids actions has been nothing but name calling or challenges like “show me the law…”. (of course, the opposite is also true)
107, People need to learn to obey authority.
117, The loquacious little twerp was given every chance to obey a reasonable request, and received exactly what could be expected by disobeying it.
130 You have to do what a cop tells you even if you think is wrong. They are the law.
You missed one. It’s called the “Law of the jungle.”
You must obey big man with weapon – or you may find yourself dead right.
Later you find small man with bigger weapon – like a fully-loaded Supreme Court.
RBG
#45 and #130 do appear to support you, and I can see why you would would make your claim, so I can admit that I was wrong.
I would posit, though, that they can each be read in a way that doesn’t make the claim you suggest, but they are vague enough to cause confusion, similar to how your phrasing was imprecise and caused confusion.
When I read #45, I read it as saying “you don’t respect cops because they have guns, you respect them because of their office”, but on further analysis your rendering is probably the more common one.
#130 sounds to me like it’s saying that it is prudent to follow orders, but not necessarily legally required, but again the wording is unfortunate. Again, my interpretation is less accurate.
The rest of your snippets don’t support you, but no matter, you only needed one to prove me wrong (and you doubled that).
If you see two possible meanings then your split personality is acting up again.
This shows you don’t really understand the proper construction of a sentence. There is a missing, and implied, clause in the sentence (as happens often in English, which is often quite imprecise). In this case, “policemen’s orders” does not necessarily refer to *ALL* policemen’s orders, but I don’t really expect you to understand it, so I won’t bother explaining it further.
As long as you’re copying snippets from messages, go back to the other cop thread we were arguing on and show me the snippet where I denied that DWBs happen. Or are you going to persist in that lie? At least I can admit when I was wrong, let’s see if you’re capable of the same.
Fusion vs. Adam Debate Report
Fusion: Mines bigger than yours.
Adam: No, mines bigger than yours.
Fusion: Yours is smaller than mine.
Adam: No, yours is smaller than mine.
Fusion: You’re stupid.
Adam: Mines bigger than yours.
Fusion: No, mines bigger than yours.
Adam: Yours is smaller than mine.
Fusion: No, yours is smaller than mine.
Adam: You’re an idiot.
Hahahahaha! You knee-jerks!
SN – Look it up online – UCLA Student code of conduct, Section IV.A.3, and I quote:
3. All persons on University property are required, for reasonable cause, to identify themselves to, and comply with instructions of, authorized University officials acting in the performance of their duties. Authorized Representatives of a Registered Campus Organization may request identification of persons in the Organization’s business meetings.
I love the internet – except when it’s full of knee-jerks who spew their uninformed opinion around like manure…
#168
I’m not entirely sure what point you were trying to prove, but you proved my point exactly.
First, it says that a student only has to show his ID for “reasonable cause.” In this attack he was forced to show it on a random check! What “reason” did anyone have to check his ID? None. If the University wants random checks, they should update their rules to inform students of the change.
Second, at no point does the section say anything about a student having to leave school grounds for failure to have an ID.
Third, at no point does it give the cops a right use a tazer, or any force, against a student for lack of compliance.
And read my third update up above: “sheriff’s policies expressly say deputies can’t use Tasers simply to move someone.” That’s exactly what happened here. The victim was not causing any trouble, he was just studying. The cops wanted him moved so they tazered him. Ooops, you guys just violated your own policies!
Just to add to SN’s comment in 169,
[LAPD Assistant Chief Jeff]Young described Tabatabainejad as a “passive resister” who refused to cooperate with officers. He acknowledged that the student didn’t actively resist the officers.
“He acknowledged that the student didn’t actively resist the officers”
So basically they zapped Ghandi, it’s a good thing the British military didn’t have tazers!
169. While still maintaining the officers did not act in the most appropriate way, let me say that a random ID check is a cause for showing ID, otherwise, what’s the point? All that remains is whether it is a reasonable cause or not. Since unauthorized people remaining in the library after 11 PM had been determined to be a threat to student safety, that makes a check reasonable… and again a cause for ID checks. There’s your “reasonable cause.”
“are required (to) comply with instructions of, authorized University officials” That pretty much covers “having to leave school grounds”.
REQUIRE: 2. to demand, as by authority; insist upon; compel.
and being zapped…
COMPEL: 1. to urge irresistibly. Syn: necessitate, coerce, constrain, make, drive, force.
The Scribner-Bantam English Dictionary.
Do you think students have to agree to these terms as a condition of enrollment?
RBG
So, Mr. Fusion is correct in that there is no law stating that everyone must obey every order given by the police. My post was used as the example to prove Adam wrong? Did anyone else here think Adam was trying to prove that we have to obey EVERY order or was it just Mr. Fusion?
In the future I will be ignoring Mr. Fusion. You attributed an argument to us and then proved that argument wrong. How stupid is that?
SN, your post #168 is wrong on two counts. You first ask “What “reason” did anyone have to check his ID?” The reason was clearly stated. The library is not available to any non-students or staff after 11pm.
Then you say the following.
“Second, at no point does the section say anything about a student having to leave school grounds for failure to have an ID.”
Why do you keep making arguments like this? Of course it doesn’t say it in that small section he posted. It does say it elsewhere though. See post #29.
Finally, your third argument is a good one. Possibly the only good one from you I have seen, but it is a clincher.
“The sheriff’s policies expressly say deputies can’t use Tasers simply to move someone”
I say both sides are wrong on this one. The student, adept at playing the role of victim, intentionally went to the library without his ID for the purpose of trapping the police into doing exactly what they did. Everyone loses.
169. “sheriff’s policies expressly say deputies can’t use Tasers simply to move someone.”
0. Update: “Several local police agencies — including the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — allow officers to use Tasers only if a suspect poses a physical threat or is acting combatively.”
Whoa. I thnk you accidently confused “Several local police agencies” with the UCLA police and possibly even the Taser policies of all other police agencies.
“Update III: It appears the UCLA doesn’t trust its internal police force, as the university has ordered an outside and independent probe of this attack.”
Now this is truly funny.
From:
UCLA’s Daily Bruin
http://www.dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=39010
Re the big student protest march to the doors of the Westwood police station:
“But students at the rally said they wanted an additional investigation to be conducted by an outside organization, adding that they wanted students to be involved with the investigation as well.”
I especially like the part about the students wanting to be involved in the independent investigation.
RBG
“Whoa. I thnk you accidently confused “Several local police agencies” with the UCLA police and possibly even the Taser policies of all other police agencies.”
So you’re saying that the UCLA police can zap someone just to move him or her?! Really?! Show me that rule please!
And I know about the student protest. But if the people behind the UCLA truly believed in their police why would they submit to the external investigation? Heck, it was only 200 students. Maybe they have a hint that something did go wrong?
Because UCLA is a compassionate organization that listens to their students – even those screaming in pain. The answer to your external investigation question is obvious.
I can’t show “UCLA police can zap someone just to move him or her” but I can explain to you just because you can point to one or two other jurisdications that forbid it, this has no bearing on UCLA.
RBG
#143…..I inadvertantly cited your post as being wrong….I apologise, I meant to cite post number 144.
All you storm trooper supporters are going to just shit when this goes to court and that kid is proved to have been a victim of stupidity and police abuse. Your going to shit more if your from California and this kid gets about 10 million from the UC system. And those wannbe storm troopers are fired and possibly charged in this case.
And I’m a law and order conservative.
178. Man, one can only truly marvel at the fellow’s brilliance. Sign me up in a heart beat.
RBG
What is it worth to be tazered four or five times within a short period of time?
I, like so many of the posts before me, find this incident absolutely troubling. To me, the operative word in determining proper response here is “context.” An earlier poster who identified himself as a library employee at a University laid out a very plausible alternative to phoning in the police: cross-check his driver’s license or other information against a student database (and yes, a rich pompous school like UCLA–as many of you have so nobly alluded to–would certainly possess such capabilities). The poster properly identified that the context of the incident was a library at a major university. The student was at a computer studying. This was not a drunk man in a dangerous area of town acting suspicious (see above cited legal authority. Not to mention there the issue was a driver’s license and not a student ID). Only under the circumstances of a very specific threat, not mere idiocy (which the kid undoubtably reacted with), should the context of a school library allow police to taser someone for not showing an ID, refusing to leave (the first time), refusing to stand, or whatever other justification anyone wants to throw out for the officer’s actions. It’s even harder to justify tasering the kid several more times or threatening to taze the concerned students for gathering or asking for a badge number.
Did the kid act like a jerk? Was it ridiculous to allude to the Patriot Act? Did he deserve to be repremanded? YES! Did he deserve to be tazered? NO! I ask some of the posters on this website to think back to some of the dumb stuff they did when they were young. I personally have plenty of friends who went to jail for the night for resisting arrest drunk at a bar with far greater resistance than this. They didn’t get tazed. I don’t think you can justify that kind of reaction here.
People that are saying the kid “deserve it” mostly ignore that “deserving it” means that the kid deserved punishment. It does NOT mean that the kid deserved to be Tazered. Grab him and throw him out of the library, let him walk out, drag him to the station, question him kicking and screaming like a little baby with four other officers to his own humiliation, I don’t care. If we’re going to start tazing people for this kind of behavior, it’s going to be an electric society.
As for the legal authority, I’d be more than happy to take on this case. Those that have cited to authority have cited to cases which are easily factually distinguishable and mostly off point. The statute is only questionably applicable in the current case and even if it is, a statute does not grant the right to TAZER someone. This kid will not need to worry about tuition at UCLA and nor should he. It’s times like this when the country should be glad to have “sharks.”