Highgate

Saturday

You should probably watch this:



Abuse of power much? yes, much to much. I myself have never been tassed, but i have been knocked to the ground and drenched in pepper sprayed, only for being in the wrong place at the wrong time with a bunch of uppity cops itching to use their toys.

Here's some of what's going around:

When he didn't immediately vacate the building, the security operatives returned with police officers to escort him from the premises. The Daily Bruin continues: "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."

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.

Students who protested at the treatment were themselves threatened to keep their distance or cop a tasering. Laila Gordy, "a fourth-year economics student who was present in the library during the incident", claimed officers threatened to zap her "when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number".

Eyewitness David Remesnitsky said of the incident: "It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life."

-The Register (UK)

These alpha male animals pumped up on stupid and the smell of twitching electrocuted flesh are supposed to be the protectors of society? Fuck that, I am seriously starting to consider just giving everybody a gun and letting people defend themselves so that we don't have to deal with this idea that we can't do ANYTHING without the po-lice. Most the time they can't help me anyway. I really, really hate that we have to rely on these people to protect us when we are wronged. It sickens me.
Dr Gonzo – Sat, 11/18/2006 – 11:43am

Police stated that the student in question encouraged other students to join his one-man resistance, which likely led police to threaten the mob that surrounded the officers. The ACLU, of course, is calling the police's actions an illegal assault and police brutality. Because the video on the web only shows the tail end of the confrontation, and then only mostly audio, many people have begun to jump to conclusions about the matter. One columnist for the Daily Bruin has cautioned against to rampant knee-jerk responses to the matter.

On a campus where arrests due to student disruption seem common, it is little surprise that police take verbal abuse by students seriously. The response to the tasering seems to speak mostly of anti-police sentiment.
- Blogcritics archive

The UCLA student stunned with a Taser by a campus police officer has hired a high-profile civil rights lawyer who plans to file a brutality lawsuit.

The videotaped incident, which occurred after the student refused requests to show his ID card to campus officers, triggered widespread debate on and off campus Thursday about whether use of the Taser was warranted. It was the third in a recent series of local incidents captured on video that raise questions about arrest tactics.

He said that Tabatabainejad, when asked for his ID after 11 p.m. Tuesday, declined because he thought he was being singled out because of his Middle Eastern appearance. Yagman said Tabatabainejad is of Iranian descent but is a U.S.-born resident of Los Angeles.

The lawyer said Tabatabainejad eventually decided to leave the library but when an officer refused the student's request to take his hand off him, the student fell limp to the floor, again to avoid participating in what he considered a case of racial profiling. After police started firing the Taser, Tabatabainejad tried to "get the beating, the use of brutal force, to stop by shouting and causing people to watch. Generally, police don't want to do their dirties in front of a lot of witnesses."

He said Tabatabainejad was hit by the Taser five times and suffered "moderate to severe contusions" on his right side.

-LA Times

Hmmm, i wonder if it's worth mentioning that his name is Mostafa Tabatabainejad or that he's of Iranian-American decent...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh jesus... far from abuse of power. taser's are not permanent damage, nor is mace ;-)

a taser is like a strong electric fence at a farm

maybe the guy should've left when security asked him to, or shown them his ID

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.

Tanner M. said...

wow.

well, Anonymous person 1 (posting anonymously really takes away some of a persons credibility)

tasers, and mace are both known to cause permanent damage and in some cases death. I'm not going to go into alot of detail, but just google taser statistics, taser deaths, etc.

As for pepper spray - at least in my condition, it was sprayed in my mouth and nose as well as my eyes, and caused my throat to swell to a point where i felt i was suffocating.

All this however, and you're missing my point - sure these devices have their uses, i'd rather a violently resisting person be tased or sprayed than shot, i know that in real world situations things arn't so cut and dry - however as in this case, the man had started leaving when he was stopped by the officers and from all accounts he had go into passive resistance by dropping to the ground and not moving. This is NOT when a person should be tased. If were brandishing a weapon, perhaps.

My arguement is this, i'm allowing for the idea that the police had the right to ask for his ID, that they even after he refused had the right to ask him to leave, and that after he had caused a scene, may have had the right to take him in for questioning. But it WAS an abuse of their power, to tase a passively resisting, unviolent, person repeatedly.

All they would have had to do at the point, was cuff him, and carry him to the cruiser. Nuff said.

----------

As for Anonymous #2

I'll keep my eyes open - but i doubt this has much to do w/ some sort of Muslim conspiracy, sounds like you're reading a little to far into this. But, anything is possible... if you find any solid evidence, by all means, let me know here.

Anonymous said...

Alright Tanner I watched the video. First, mace and pepper spray are two different things. I remember when you got sprayed and I imagine it sucked. I think this incident is completely different than yours. Second the officers ordered the individual several times to get up or he would be tasered again. There are many LEGAL options for methods of compliance to be used by officers and these can change from state to state but here are a few --- short jabs, mace, pepper spray, baton pokes. When given an order by an officer, failure to follow such orders can leave it to the officer's discretion to elevate the use of force. In this video the individual not only refuses to follow said instructions, but makes his own fate worse by struggling against them as they try to lead him out.

So, if the officers are acting legally and as they are trained, is it really abuse of power? You may have opted for a different course of action if you were the cop, but then again you weren't dealing with someone who refused to heed your instructions to stand up and leave, and you weren't surrounded by 20 or so people who are obviously not on your side.

An unpleasant situation, but I really don't think it's abuse of power. Besides, carrying the guy down flights of stairs would've only resulted in the officers dropping the guy, he plunges to his death and then unlawlful death suits force higher taxes on the residents because the jury finds that they should have made the individual walk down the stairs to begin with ;-)

-Mike

Anonymous said...

Horrible campus police, besides that making me sick to my stomach, how hard is it to carry an obviously not big student out the door? They did it eventually, he wasn't resisting they just kept tazering him. That was racism in its purest form.