UCLA (university of california, los angeles) tazer incident

^Blind, he had cause as non-students were not supposed to be in the library after 11pm so that was fine, but AFAIK, I just think its pretty stupid if they don't have ID, they are not a student, they should have asked for the name, student number.... etc.

But everything else you said was spot on, the cops were simply escalating the situation, and according to one of the articles, he got fed up and wanted to leave already but for some reason, the cop stopped him from leaving and thats where the video started with "Don't touch me"
 
^huh? Who was defending the cops reaction? I already said the 2nd taser was unnessasary but I cannot say whether the first was justified or unjustified as we cannot tell from the video.

well sorry if i implied you. You were not defending them but jeffy was as far as i could see. I just got pretty angry thinking about it and typed too fast for my brain to follow. I hate these situations becouse i know it would happen to me - i'd be also very stubborn in defending my rights.
 
Ok, in the experience of my entire family the universities that run their own police force tend to attract the bottom-of-the-barrel cops; ones that could not cut it in other police forces. Most of the time these guys never graduated college themselves and get off hassling "college kids."

I can vouch for that, i can't even count how many times last year the rent-a-cops at my school were either being dicks unnecessarily or smoking weed w/ a few of the students while they were on duty.

As for the tazering, I agree i'd definitely hafta see or hear about what exactly caused the first one.
 
Let's get something out of the way, the cause of this was the student "failed" to show ID when asked. UC is a public institution, so the Bill of Rights applies. Last time I checked, it's not Constitutional for a cop to just ask you for your ID without cause. Even so, maybe he forgot his ID in his dorm, maybe he lost it, or maybe he had it with him and just took exception to the way to cop questioned him.

I have done hours and hours of training in conflict resolution, domestic violence, physical restraint techniques and thousands of hours of psychology. From what I can tell the cops are the ones at fault for the situation. Could the student have shown his ID (assuming he had it)? Yes, but the cops are the ones who are supposed to resolve conflict, not cause it. This is crappy training, plain and simple.

UC is a public institution, meaning that it is publicly (government) funded, rather than funded by private interests. Therefor, it is not public property, and any student can be asked to present their ID at any time. The student ID is proof of their right to be on campus, and anyone without ID can be escorted off campus. Whether or not a University decides to allow the public access to its library or not is besides the point.

Not defending the cops, I think they could have talked him down at least. But the problem is that they are the more right of the two parties. Sounds like the kid was wanting to make a scene and the cops didn't feel like being diplomatic...
 
Not defending the cops, I think they could have talked him down at least. But the problem is that they are the more right of the two parties. Sounds like the kid was wanting to make a scene and the cops didn't feel like being diplomatic...
That's not their decision to make. Tasers are only supposed to be used when there is a threat of violence, not when the subject merely refuses to comply. Judging by what was heard in the video (I didn't hear him make any threats to the police officer, did you?) and by what was said by a student who was there:

"Any student who witnessed it was left with an image you don't want to remember," said a witness who asked not to be identified.

When asked whether the student resisted when officer attempted to escort him from the building, the witness said, "In the beginning, no. But when they were holding onto him and they were on the ground, he was trying to just break free. He was saying, 'I'm leaving, I'm leaving.' It was so disturbing to watch that I cannot be concise on that. I can just say that he was willing to leave. He had his backpack on his shoulder and he was walking out when the cops approached him. It was unnecessary."

No one was under threat of violence except the student ("Get up or I'll tase you again"). There was absolutely no reason for the police officers to act that way.


I'm sure if this happened in China, no one would defend the police officers.
 
well sorry if i implied you. You were not defending them but jeffy was as far as i could see. I just got pretty angry thinking about it and typed too fast for my brain to follow. I hate these situations becouse i know it would happen to me - i'd be also very stubborn in defending my rights.

I'm not justifying the cops or defending them. I'm just saying that the guy was acting like a bonehead and I'm not really surprised that something happened (though the excessiveness by the cops is....well, excessive). He could have avoided it if he simply would have left instead of screaming and trying to make a scene. I think the cops certainly could have handled it better as well. I agree with Andy: the numerous tazer blasts weren't necessary.

The only point I've been trying to make is that the guy could have steered clear of this whole mess. In fact, the following video sheds some new light and points out that it wasn't even the cops who originally asked him for an ID, it was a civilian employee (CSO) who asked several times for an ID and then asked him to leave several times because he refused to identify himself. The kid wouldn't comply, only then were the cops called in for assistance. So the kid had a more than enough of a chance to leave peacefully before the cops ever even got there. That's being a bonehead. However, the cops should have just dragged him out instead of blasting him repeatedly. So I think both the kid and the cop made some mistakes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMl4u1E2_bY[/youtube]
 
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I'm not saying that the student is faultless, but the cops were the ones who escalated the situation. Anyway, this is just the same video as before but with an interview from the police chief who heads a department woefully lacking in training.

I worked as a volunteer with my local PD for two years, and I can tell you that even with the light training I received the emphasis is on conflict resolution. Whatever happened with the IDs is immaterial, the Taser is supposed to be used as a substitute for deadly force to give the officer an option. The student was shouting and causing a scene (because the officers grabbed him instead of trying to talk him down) but he was not threatening. That is the key, he was disturbing the peace and not showing his ID but he was not a threat to the officers or any library patrons.

Even assuming one Tasering was justified, and I'm not saying it was, the Taser interferes with the electrochemical impulses from the brain, immobilizing the suspect. This gives the officers a short window in which to restrain the suspect and handcuff him. Shooting someone with a Taser and then ordering them to stand up is not good procedure, most people are unable to stand for a few minutes after being hit with a Taser. The electrical impulses fire all your synapses (the chemical part of the nerves) at once, these synapses need to reset themselves before they can be used again. Tasering him again after he is unable to stand from the first bolt of electricity is not law enforcement, it's punishment for not following commands. That makes the officers the judge and jury by skipping straight to punishing the suspect for not following orders. Officers should have arrested him as quickly as possible and charged him with a crime if he was breaking the law, but tasering him multiple times does not make them officers of the law, it makes them a bunch of thugs, and that's exactly the type of person that gets a job on University police forces.
 
Yeah, so the tasering was not called for. But the kid should have left before the cops even got there. He refused to leave when asked repeatedly to do so by the CSO, and so the cops were called.
 
None of us were there, this guy was:


Okay kids, I'm here!

Yes, I was indeed at Powell Library at approximately 11:30 on Tuesday night, and yes I did see the entire event as it went down.

Let me start off by saying that the guy DEFINITELY was asking to get his ass kicked. He was being extremely rude with the campus patrol guys (who are college students...this was before the real UCPD got called in). He was not complying with their requests to leave the premises, and he was definitely itching for a fight. I actually know the guy and a few of his friends, and I can tell you that he's the kind of guy that loves to make trouble.

Just as a little backstory, one of the quotes the guy has on his facebook (which he now has taken down) was "I like to find the most difficult solutions to the simplest of problems".

He definitely taunted the UCPD into behaving the way they did with him.

Edit: Many people have questioned the fact that the cops tazed him and asked him to get up, and tazed him again even though he shouldn't have the capability to get up. This was not the case here to my knowledge, because the cops were using their "drive-stun" method which administers less of a jolt than normal. I believe this because anyone who can ramble on about this being the patriot act and yell at the top of his lungs should have the capability of getting up.
Last edited by Doormat : Yesterday at 06:50 PM.


Also I'd like to add that our local campus patrol officers (the college guys with the night jobs) and the UCPD have a really good track record, and my experiences with them have been great. In the food chain of good cop/bad cop, these guys are definitely on the "letting shit slide" part.

I have class with one campus officers who was there last night, so I'm going to ask him what his take was on it and what they were discussing while this was going down.
 
None of us were there, this guy was:

Let me start off by saying that the guy DEFINITELY was asking to get his ass kicked. He was being extremely rude with the campus patrol guys (who are college students...this was before the real UCPD got called in). He was not complying with their requests to leave the premises, and he was definitely itching for a fight. I actually know the guy and a few of his friends, and I can tell you that he's the kind of guy that loves to make trouble.

I had a feeling that the guy was "itching for a fight".

Where did you find that?
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't tazers meant to be used as a form of defense? It's upsetting that they're being used just to make things more convenient for police.
 
But this guy never described the situation, yes he may have been causing trouble in the beginning or in the past....but from what I have read, when the cops finally came, he got fed up and decided to walk out already, which explains why he's at the door, then I believe the cop tried to hold him back for some reason.

about using the "Drive Stun"... regardless of what stun he was using, it was still completely unnecessary, he was already safely in custody and was not a threat to anyone, its not like he head budded the cop. And the fact that he couldn't get up, cops should have known better a person can't move when getting tasered as that is the entire point of a taser, to temporarily paralyze them isn't it so they don't keep running away or calm down...

and the comments from the cops were very very unprofessional, such as
"Don't come any closer of I'll tase you aswell"
I wouldn't want that kinda cop in my neighborhood let alone my uni.
 
you guys are kidding right? you cannot be serious and agreeing with police actions. I would not sue the cops i think i'd shoot them in their faces. He was laying on the floor and they tazerd him? OK you loose your cool and you tazer the guy -once. Similiar stuff happens everywhere. But you keep tazering him - what is this the inquisition?
Its just sad that you have such either brainwashed and stupid or sadistic and stupid cops. And they keep hiding behind the laws yet people give them support - like the guy must have earned it. I'd like to see someone who agrees with cops to find himself in similar situation. The cops deserve to be publicly humiliated and severly punished.
If a sadist like that can wear a badge than nobody is safe anywhere. We all better shut up and listen to retards in uniforms - they know better right.
I don't think that anyone defending the cops knows anything about human rights or so called freedom. If you defend it you are a scared conformist imo.

:lmao: :lmao: You must have never been to California...when I visited my brother when he was living in Englewood and Silverlake, and from the stories he told me, you tell a Cali cop what you said and youre asking for trouble. Police in Los Angeles are brutal and take NO shit.
 
Hmm, interesting topic this turned out to be.

So the guy was being a smart-ass who wanted to make trouble. This still doesn't counter-act the fact that the police officers did a whole lot of mistakes on this one.

mistakes:
#1 When the guy was leaving quietly (he was by the door, btw), why would the police officer suddenly touch him? Now that's just like asking for it. As far as I know, he wasn't under arrest at the time he volunteered to leave, so that's excessive force when it DEFINITELY wasn't needed. Even a small a thing as that is excessive force ... if it's not needed, why use it? Especially on hard-assed people like this guy, they should have let him walk out on his own terms, otherwise I think they could have been sure that he'd make a scene ... so in fact the cops were the ones who lighted the match, had they been trained properly, this wouldn't have happened in the first place.

#2: The guy was resisting to the excessive force (and the slight touch was still excessive force) by thowing himself on the ground and protesting. But as far as it is apparent, he wasn't resisting arrest, he was just being a hard-headed nut. And I can't hear any of the officers telling him to stop resisting arrest ... they're just telling him to get up. As far as I know, in the states, when you're under arrest, you're supposed to be told you're under arrest, they tell you your rights and they lead you to the police station IN HANDCUFFS. None of these seem to have been done as shown in the video ... the handcuffs are applied later, after he refused to get up and was already stunned twice. As for being declared under arrest and being told his rights, none of the officers did it. So really, he wasn't under arrest. That was their mistake. As far as the guy knew, he wasn't under arrest, nor did anybody else think he was. The cops were being the hard-headed ones in this one.

#3 Suppose they had officially tried to arrest him and he was resisting, why would they need to use the tazzer 5 ... that's F-I-V-E times? You taze him once, get him into the handcuffs and drag his butt out of the place ... but no. The officers thought it much easier to taze him a few times and convince him to walk out. Did they really think that if they tazed such a hard-head enough, then he'd co-operate? That's not trying to arrest the suspect, that's trying to beat the suspect into submission. They wanted to have him walking out on his own two feet and wouldn't have it otherwise, that's bullying .. a proper cop wouldn't attempt to get the suspect's approval on the arrest, if he's under arrest, he's going to the station, whether he approves or not doesn't matter. It's not as if he was holding onto something so they can't carry him out or anything, so the subsequent electric shocks were absolutely unjustified

#4 Say this was an arrest and the public around the area protested ... they should have ONLY been told to stay back. But the cop not only told them to stay back, he threatened violence on people that weren't even implicated in the guy's plans. Since when do the police have the right to threaten innocent civilians? As far as I know, it's within any american's rights to speak out and protest against anything, so they're not only doing a bad job, they're going against people's rights. And why do they threaten innocent civilians when their duty is actually to protect them against threats and violence?

As far as I can see, that's not police work, that's just using police work as an excuse to push people around.
 
There's a lot of gray area when it comes to handcuffing people in this country. You can be cuffed and even put in the back of a police car while they sort things out. It's only after they determine they can press charges that they tell you you're under arrest and read you your rights. If it turns out you're innocent, they then let you go. I think it's kinda messed up that the justice system is based on proof, but police can search and detain people based on "reasonable suspicion" and "probable cause".
 
but even if they handcuff you if they suspect you of something, isn't that still an arrest?

Vladmitu, what you said in point 1 was spot on, it looks like the guy was leaving but I don't even know why the police stopped him... prob. just trying to be an ass and didn't want to get dissed by college kids or something, and his first sentence in the video" Don't touch me" was neither offensive nor a threat, it is perfectly fine to say that if a Police officer touches you.
 
but even if they handcuff you if they suspect you of something, isn't that still an arrest?

If they handcuff you, you're clearly under arrest (unless it's a porn video :)). And indeed, he was suspected of trespassing ... but he was a student there afterall, so he wasn't really trespassing. For all they know, he could still be a student there, so how can they arrest him if even they doubt that he had commited the crime? You can arrest a person for suspecting that they commited a crime, but if that suspicion isn't based on anything concrete, then you can't arrest somebody like that. If you can arrest someone on the slightest of suspicion, cops might as well arrest every kid in my neighborhood for suspected posession of drugs ... just because they dress like "gangsta's". And people who consume drugs usually dress like that.

You can arrest a guy for having blood on his shirt, because he might have injured someone (or maybe just opened the local butcher's door at the most inopportune of times, or maybe had a really serious nose bleed) ... but you can't arrest someone because they just got out of the house holding a kitchen knife in their hand ... for all you know, he's going to his neighbour's for a bbq and the neighbor needed a good knife. If suspicion were all it was, noone would ever cook ... because hey, they're holding a knife in the same room as their children, who knows what they'll do :lmao: .
 
These second-rate rent-a-cops should be arrested by some real officers for using excessive force, serve some time, be then stripped of being allowed to work as any sort of officer of the law whatsoever.

Sure, the guy was being a knucklehead, but, at no point did he threaten to commit or actually commit an offensive act against the officers. When officers of the law are allowed to break the law (breach basic rights) and effectively beat people into submission without any received physical threat, we don't have a democracy anymore, we have a gestapo.

Hearing some of the statements he was making, it sounded like he was pretty disaffected by the continual loss of basic rights that citizens in the U.S. are experiencing. I can't say I wouldn't feel the same way (or don't already feel that same way, even living north of 49!).
 
The video shows the last 5 minutes of a much bigger incident from crappy angles. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions.

The problem I have is that the ID rule is something put in place for safety and security of the students. We just had that shooting up in Canada not too long ago. If you're going to be wandering around on campus, then you should have identification showing that you're authorized to be there. It's a safety measure. But apparently the rules don't apply to this kid. The fact that he was asked many times to leave or provide ID but refused is reason enough to call the police. If the kid still won't leave and presents a possible safety risk to the students, he should be removed by force. But if the kid screams in the cop's faces when touched and starts cussing them out... then there is going to be a big problem.

Personally, I don't think the kid has anyone to blame but himself for what happened.
 
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