The latest nationally recognized incident of excessive use of force by the LAPD police in Los Angeles (the third this week) came Tuesday night right here on the UCLA campus’ main library. Apparently UCLA has a policy by which they do random ID checks at the library after 11 p.m. That’s all good, since it is for the benefit of student safety. That’s what started this incident:
According to a campus police report, the incident began when community service officers, who serve as guards at the library, began their nightly routine of checking to make sure everyone using the library after 11 p.m. is a student or otherwise authorized to be there…When [Mostafa] Tabatabainejad, 23, refused to provide his ID to the community service officer, the officer told him he would have to show it or leave the library, the report said.
After repeated requests, the officer left and returned with campus police, who asked Tabatabainejad to leave “multiple times,” according to a statement by the UCLA Police Department.
“He continued to refuse,” the statement said. “As the officers attempted to escort him out, he went limp and continued to refuse to cooperate with officers or leave the building.”
Witnesses disputed that account, saying that when campus police arrived, Tabatabainejad had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack. When an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, the witnesses said, Tabatabainejad told the officer to let go, yelling “Get off me” several times.
“Tabatabainejad encouraged library patrons to join his resistance,” police said. “The officers deemed it necessary to use the Taser.”
Officers stunned Tabatabainejad, causing him to fall to the floor. [Link]
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Here is my issue with what I see in the clip. If a person violates a law and you want to arrest him then go ahead. I am certainly not going to argue that Tabatabainejad did not deserve to be arrested. There are legal ways to change a law if you think it is stupid. What I take issue with is the repeated use of a Taser as a punitive measure against a passively resisting citizen that is already on the ground. Passive resistance is a gift given to us by Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If the officers need to then they can call for backup. A handful of officers shouldn’t have a problem cuffing and carrying a limp, non-compliant man to their waiting car unless he is morbidly obese. The Taser is used here to punish the victim for disobeying authority. Is this what could happen to me if I ever non-violently protest something? And what if this individual was mentally ill or off his meds? Add to this toxic mix the fact that he was Muslim (and I’m guessing that he probably has brown skin).
You will note in the video that the other students in the library are on the verge of rioting against the police. The police start looking like cornered animals as more and more students gather around, ask for their badge numbers, and tell them that they are abusing their power.
As the student and the officers were struggling, bystanders repeatedly asked the police officers to stop, and at one point officers told the gathered crowd to stand back and threatened to use a Taser on anyone who got too close.
Laila Gordy, a fourth-year economics student who was present in the library during the incident, said police officers threatened to shoot her with a Taser when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number. [Link]
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p>As you might have expected, CAIR is all over this:
The Southern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) today called for an independent investigation of an incident late Tuesday in which a student at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) was given multiple “Taser” stun gun shocks by campus police.
CAIR-LA was contacted by several UCLA students who expressed their concern about possible civil rights violations by police officers. [Link]
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p>Tabatabainejad got off a few shots of his own as he was being Tasered:
Video shot from a student’s camera phone captured the student yelling, “Here’s your Patriot Act, here’s your fucking abuse of power,” while he struggled with the officers. [Link]
Thank goodness for cell phone cameras.
Update:
Let the UCLA PD know what you think. Here is what they have to say about it.
Or looking like an accomplice of your friend that’s burning the Chinese flag at the Chinese embassy.
Jai Singh, cut to the chase. Do you believe me or do you not believe me? If you believe me, say so without all this passive-agressive nonsense. If you don’t, likewise.
See, this frustrates me because it reflects the notion that regulation and justice have to be violent. This cruelty-for-cruelty, blast-his-brains-out-that’ll-solve-everything attitude is so unproductive.
I am getting the same unfair reaction from you as Manju got from that Saurav guy when he was defending gays. Why don’t you preach like this when one of your leftie cabal friends justifies Palestinian suicide bombings or even the train bombing in Mumbai ( Mr K is a champion at that )? And come on whom are you fooling with your moderate sounding baloney?:
but I do agree on his point that y’all need to make sure you have your facts straight before you demonstrate today.
It’s very clear from your comments on this post that you have already made up your mind, facts or no facts.
As Gujudude said most of the commenters are being ’emotive’. Why not counter the points made or alluded to in Manju’s, Gujudude’s or my posts?
And yes Kobayashi can be witty at times but his worldview is pathetically misguided. A commenter with a similar intensity of rightist views would long have been ridiculed out of here.
Siddhartha,
I don’t engage in passive-aggressive behaviour, nonsensical or otherwise.
I believe that, as far as you know, you are not aware of any duplicity or gameplaying regarding the aforementioned matter. I explained the reasons for this above, especially the fact that I trust Anna’s opinion of people. I do not know you offline and can therefore only base my views on the limited amount of information available here on SM — which has not led me to regard you as a dishonest or malicious person, and I’m also aware you’re on good terms with BongBreaker, who I have an extremely high opinion of and whose judgement I also trust.
Dear jilted_manhood: I understand your sympathy for someone like Manju who is on the same ideological wavelength as you, but is this:
necessary ? From what I have seen of Manju, his (her?) forensic skills are jack. He misquotes and misattributes. And far from “demolishing arguments”; if you don’t get frustrated with him, don’t treat him like a troll, and marshal your facts properly, the guy just shrivels (see, for instance, comments 55, 56 & 57 in “Draconian…” from 10/20).
GujuDude, I think it’s a little unfair of you to use what a cadet could take and hold everyday civillians up to the same level. i’m pretty sure that cadet could take a lot of things that would render me helpless, so I’m not quite sure that your argument in that case makes sense.
Jilted_Manhood,
I’ve agreed with many of your points on this thread (except for the one about tasering cops), but with all due respect, based on previous discussions with Shruti I don’t think she’s one of these extreme-left-wing types. Some other commenters who have occasionally seen fit to grace SM with their presence certainly have been, but Shruti is not. In fact, she’s previously been on the receiving end of unwarranted harrassment here — even bullying — by exactly the kind of people you’re condemning.
This really hurts my feelings. I mean, I thought we were all friends here. Jilted-manhood, show me one time, just one time, when I’ve been, as you say, “witty.” Links and date, please.
“Pathetically misguided,” definitely. Join the queue buddy. It’s a known known. Shit, I’m in the queue myself.
But “witty”?
IMO the issue here isn’t a mouthy student– where else is mouthiness tolerated but in college– it’s the expanding use of tasers as a convenience where pain would not otherwise be inflicted. Sort of like how the availability of copy machines, or email, or text messaging, alters behavior due to convenience. After hearing this kid’s inhuman shrieks, you cannot help wonder whether our law enforcement future includes cattle prods once again.
It’s also fascinating how the debate is such a clear political litmus test on whether you empathize with the annoying kid being electrocuted or those with their fingers on the trigger. It’s blown up at the political blogs far more than at the ethnic ones, and the YouTubes have the predictably infantile comment, ‘hahahaha fry the little bitch one more time,’ by those who torment animals by shoving firecrackers up their asses. The latter turns you into either serial killer or President.
At the end of the day, a college kid who left his ID at home got fried. At the gym that only gets you a pen and a clipboard.
Jai,
I trust you so I’ll take that back. However I am not sure why she had to pick me when several commenters have said worse things should be done to the guilty cops. Anyways it was more rhetoric. I strongly belive that abuse of power by people in uniform is one of the worst things. I have seen it personally both in India and here in the US. And honestly I have wanted to hit back even though the confrontation never started out as violent. It’s the humiliation of an unarmed person by often a bigger, armed one that gets me. A recent image that sticks is one of a an LA officer viciously kicking a little Mexican woman trying to flee after being caught stowed away on a pickup truck. I am just saying I sympathize with the militant anger against authority in such cases.
You forgot one more thing it does, tell the truth.
On Pg3: As of the year 2000 only 4.6% of new police recruits, in cities of 250,000 or more, had 4 year degrees. From anecdotal data of my observation, everyone in my high school who went into this line of work did so because their families looked down on a college education, or at the very least saw little value in it.
Jilted_Manhood,
I don’t know, I guess she was just picking up on the “tazering cops” issue and objected to the idea of “tit-for-tat” reciprocal violence. She does have a point there, of course, although I do understand the motivations behind your rhetoric and objections (which I share) to the abuse of power by those in authority, even though we both agree that putting that rhetoric into practice would obviously be a bad idea and not exactly the most ethical thing in the world to do. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and similar cliches.
Shruti does occasionally use some trendy-sounding jargon but she is definitely not one of those rabid nutjobs. As I said, she’s been hassled by people here who really do fall into that category. I’ve found her to be a nice person and pretty fair-minded, and definitely not one of the “reactionary” types.
OK guys…in defense of Siddhartha & Jai Singh
Siddhartha as well as all the other mutineers most of whom I know personally are not the types of people to play mischief nor be disingenous and when they say something I would believe them without a doubt. They all possess integrity even if I may not agree with all their viewpoints. They are good people remember that.
Jai a lot of the drama you are referring to from the past that I am aware of and was involved with was before Siddhartha became a regular blogger so it would be unfair to him to assume he may be involved because he may not even be aware of it.
And I do agree Jai that there was some seriously multiplicity nonsense going on for a bit thought not necessarily at the encouragement of the bloggers as much as perhaps a little bit of neglect because lets get real, there are 1000s of comments a day, all the bloggers have other real jobs and maintaining a very busy blog is a lot of hard work. I do think it has changed in the past several weeks. A lot of the regular “trolls” we used to have are gone and you can definitely see discussions getting cleaned up a lot faster.
Can we get past this one issue and not allow it to taint good discussions from time to time? It is in the past, we cannot change it, lets move on please.
I do realize after being a regular commenter for a long time that the general viewpoint is left leaning on this blog. Not always in the posts but definitely in the flavor of the ensuing discussions. We cannot control that. It is what it is. I simply wish for a more civilized banter between the opposing sides and more importantly tolerance of right leaning views which doesn’t seem to happen lately. Obviously all the political and necessary at that posts lend to that divide. It’s bound to happen.
Unless theyÂ’re funny. ItÂ’s all good then…seems to sometimes become the rule rather than racist, abusive, illiterate, content-free or commercial comments; personal, non-issue-focused flames; intolerant or anti-secular comments; and long, obscure rants may be deleted.
It’s amazing that what probably began as a fairly innocuous exchange b/w two parties at a campus library so quickly escalated into this mess.
HMF said: On Pg3: As of the year 2000 only 4.6% of new police recruits, in cities of 250,000 or more, had 4 year degrees.
That is not an accurate reading of the table. The table lists departments that required college degrees. More than 95 percent of the police departments, in cities that had a population of 250k or more, did not NEED their sworn officers to have college degrees.
Not the same thing.
It was my opinion on the tangential point about using violence to punish violence, not a criticism of your character or world-view. I knew there was a possibility that you were speaking figuratively to express that you do sympathize with the students, hence my acknowledgement that it might be nit-picky.
That was technical advice on organizing for Taz and her fellow protestors. It applies whether you’re left, right, top, bottom, whatever.
What difference does it make even if I have made up my mind? I’m not being emotive – I made no exclamations, no demands to bring anyone to the guillotine. Policing hegemony is something I study, so yes I have some preconceived notions about policing and what might have been going on here. I can still be sincere in my advice to get the facts straight for the sake of fairness and to be PC in the protesting (do I really need a diabolical reason for such a common sense suggestion?). If you don’t believe me, then you don’t take me seriously – which is fine with me – but if it’s like that, then don’t bother taking this conversation into circles.
What was this guy protesting against (by not showing is id) ? Even at the start of the video (when he wasn’t tasered), why was this guy shouting loudly “don’t touch me” ?…and that too in a library. That’s not “civil disobedience” IMO. My guess is that he was provoking some kind of response from the police. He was finally successful in provoking them to respond..but he couldn’t have imagined the kind of response that those officers had in mind! Use of tasers in this case is going overboard…he could have been easily carried out by 4 officers.
This shite is pretty nasty .. Over-reacting and nothing else .. Calling backup was probably the most sensible thing that could have been done at that point of time .. they say that ucpd employs 60 full-time officers.. there should have been more officers around the campus … unless, everyone was on vacation except these two sorry dudes …
GujuDude …. different people would react differently when tasered, as with different people getting drunk on varied # of drinks. It might not be a very good analogy but the structure and the build of a person’s body is of importance here. the cadet you are talking about looks quite well built and added to the fact that he has undergone rigorous physical training as part of the pre-searing for the cadet. the guy at ucla being tasered, on the other hand, looks quite skinny.. People have died when tasered, due to cardiac arrests. Plus, the mostafa guy was tasered 5 times in quick succession .. under less than 5 minutes .. thats enough to take out a horse momentarily …
everything else is for the jury to decide …
but if, if the guy was truly walking out, this was totally uncalled for. more to do with “I’m da Man in here” mentality rather than anything else.. ..
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, but this seems to be the third video of LAPD high-handedness during an arrest to surface in the last week link .
According to the wikipedia: ‘Between September 1999 and October 2004, there were 73 cases of deaths of subjects soon after having been shocked using Tasers. ….In 8 cases, medical examiners said Tasers were a cause or a contributing factor or could not be ruled out as a cause of death….These incidents form a very small percentage of many tens of thousands of operational uses of tasers.’
Assuming around 50,000 taser events since 1999, that would be around 1 death per five thousand taser uses. I do not know what the accepted rate of fatality during drug testing is, but I doubt a drug that killed one out of every five thousand people would be allowed on the market.
This estimate is based only on the eight cases where a medical examiner confirmed that the taser was a contributing cause.
GujjuDude,
The police officers aren’t allowed to get physical you say? Using a tazer is not? What i see here is the cops using unnecessary force. Even if the student was going limp and making it harder for the cops, to tazer him? c’mon. I’m pretty sure the cops knew they were dealing with some student and not some hardened criminal. Seems like they were just very angry that he wasn’t obeying them. If he did go limp, all they had to do was drag him out! Two cops can do that.
I’m quoting someone’s else quotation, but it’s perfect.
JOAT,
re: post #165
Thank you for writing such a thoughtful and balanced message.
With regards to your main point: No problem — I’ll take you at your word too 😉
A belated response to an unrelated topic — you should never have mentioned people calling you “Rupaul”, because you know I’m now going to call you that at every possible opportunity…..
🙂
I am not condoning the use of excessive force but I don’t think the situations are identical… from the report it looks like he refused to show his ID. If he had left it at home, I think they may have accepted a driver’s license/alternate ID as would your local gym. I’m fairly sure any gym would ask you to leave too if you walked in and refused to identify yourself. The student was uncooperative for unknown reasons.
While I agree with those who suggest that we should hold off on judgement till the evidence is in, it’s going to be very difficult for the police to come up with the evidence to justify the frequency with which they used the taser on the student, regardless of what the student’s crimes may have been or how resistant he was to moving. Additionally, the fact that one of the cops retaliated against a request for a badge number by threatening to taser the student is illegal.
Tabatabainejad’s claim, btw, is that he thought he was being racially profiled. From today’s NYT:
Right, so if 95.4% of the police departments say they do not require 4 year degrees, and the applicants go, “Hey wait a minute, I need a 4 year degree”
Tabatabainejad’s claim, btw, is that he thought he was being racially profiled.
I was about to point this out. A lot of people accusingly talked about him refusing to show his ID but no one seemed to consider the very obvious (in my opinion) reason why he might do so. If he didn’t know about the ID check policy, then from his perspective what happened was that he was simply studying in the library when he was approached by police asking for his ID. If that happened to me, I might refuse too even though racial profiling is not exactly an issue in my case.
In the end this is a very clear case showing use of excessive force by the cops (no matter what provocation or alleged intentions on behalf of the student that you may bring up to justify the force). The cops have to be promptly reprimanded for that or it will feed discontent among the students and the general civilian population. Without an expression of public outrage in the form of protests (and blogs) the cops will be let off (there enough examples to expect that). Go figure. That said, I do appreciate the work that cops do without whom there can be no order in such a large society but every such incident takes away their credibility if left unpunished. In simplistic terms every time you support a bad cop you are doing a disservice to a good cop.
Right, so if 95.4% of the police departments say they do not require 4 year degrees, and the applicants go, “Hey wait a minute, I need a 4 year degree”
Beyond the fact that this makes no sense, you’re just plain wrong. According to the BLS, 25% of police officers have college degrees.
Manju, j’accuse! I find you guilty of feeding the trolls.
Kobayashi, Why so surprised? I’ve consistently despised you since you first appeared here on SM, as your own link shows and as I stated here. I feed you for the same reason I feel compelled to go into a porno store, or an art gallery. You are an Wildian provacateur with a streak of Orwellian seriousness. Such duplicitousness deserves many a backhanded insult.
If I ever saw you in person, I’d taser you…right after buying you a beer.
It looks like the case is headed into murkier waters Tasered student claims racial profiling.
The punishment did not fit the crime, therefor it was wrong.
I jus saw this video.. Its totally hopeless… I was shocked to see this kind of incident happening in UCLA… This is totally a misuse of power…. These guys must be screwed… I dont feel that the arrest of that guy is wrong, but the way things had been handled is poor. Shame on UCLAPD…
Since when are Persians South Asians?
This is true. The problem is at lower levels like this such as campus police departments, county police departments at lower levels such as Sergeant and Officer, and other “rentable” cops, what you mostly have is garbage, unsuccessful people who are hungry for power. Because they are not intelligent to get well paying, normal jobs, they settle for a decent job where they have the ability to feel powerful and can take out their anger over their “failed lives” on other citizens (being a minority probably adds to the anger as well) I’m sure people will disagree with me on this, but I am only talking about the lower levels of law enforcement I mentioned above. If someone is a detective, or doing something truly valuable to help serve/protect the community (homicide detective, anti-terrorism, anti-drug etc) then I give them the utmost respect. But being a library monitor, or a traffic cop? Garbage people doing their garbage jobs.
I never claimed that 95.6% didn’t have degrees. And my point makes perfect sense, at my university, the police officers would regularly talk about “smart rich kids” that get everything “handed to them on a plate” Seriously, what do you think motivates someone to be a university cop? To serve and protect? To safeguard the nation’s brightest minds?
This story is getting weirder. Now the student is saying that he didn’t want to show his ID because he thought he was being racailly profiled. I’m not sure if he was aware of the Library policy or not; or if the person asking him told him that it was after 11pm and it’s the rules. Or that other people were not being asked and just him; There is also no clarification as to how the confrontation went down. I don’t agree with how they treated the guy after the first taser, but I’ll reserve judgement until I know the full story. Too many people jumping on too many bandwagons…
What’s the point in stereotyping them? Somebody has to do the job. They may not be “successful” in your terms but not necessarily hungry for power, somebody in their family might be proud of their “success” in becoming a cop. They can be decent people doing the job they can get just trying to exist. Why paint them all with the same brush?
The only important point is the health of the law enforcement system. It has to remain functional and effective in spite of the bad apples. Every incident like this should be used to throw out the bad apples and improve the system to be more humane and responsive to society.
Brotherhood of the Browns man… Of course a Persian student intentionally ramming people with an SUV is not blogworthy 😉
The point about the health of the law enforcement system is true, but I think the problem is inherent in a capitalist society. It seems as if at the lower levels of law enforcement (where the pay, benefits, satisfaction are less), the majority of the cops are “bad apples”. While this is stereotyping, I highly believe this to be true. As HMF said, why the hell would anyone want to be a University Cop? Even if someone is highly interested in law enforcement, they would much prefer to work for a higher level of law enforcement (FBI, US Martials, Detectives etc). These lower level positions are a last option job in most cases for people who failed to make it into other, more prominent and beneficial areas of law enforcement. Thats just how it is.
Actually HMF, you did say that 95.6 percent did not have degrees. I was pointing out that your link did not backup your statements. I hate to do this but here goes:
HMF:I never claimed that 95.6% didn’t have degrees.
HMF also said: On Pg3: As of the year 2000 only 4.6% of new police recruits, in cities of 250,000 or more, had 4 year degrees.
I am done.
i think this latest development (racial profiling) is quite predictable and was never too far from the surface from the beginning. true of not, it explains the student’s hysteria and lack of cooperation. interstingly, issues of class have certainly bubbled up on this thread by a few commenters, HMF in particular (“HALP US HMF, WE ARE STUK HEAR IN THE LAPD”), any may explain the frustration the cops feel when patrolling campus’ known for their disdain for the military and police.
The video was really disturbing, and it was difficult to get through it while hearing his screams of pain.
I’ve been reading and hearing that the student mentioned a medical condition. Does anybody have any information to confirm/ elucidate that ?
Lets see 4.6% of new police recruits in cities of 250,000 or more IS NOT EQUAL TO 95.6 percent did not have degrees
Get it Jay? How about some honesty in your argument?
BOW got him. Jay, don’t fret, you caught me out and I accept it – Maybe I am John Kerry.
Either way, anyone who disagrees with the statement that policemen disproportionately do not have college educations and that in some way adversely affects their attitudes towards policing university students is, flying in the face of common sense. Whether it be 4.6% or 25%. Maybe Manju and the other apologists can answer my previous question as to the motivation of entering the exciting world of campus policing?
Me personally, whenever I am confronted by a cop, I don’t consider myself living in the United States of America, I say I live in the United states of That cop. Meaning, whatever he says you pretty much $@)(#$ing do it.
The guy involved isn’t the most sympathetic plaintiff– he sounds like a provocateur:
… [he] declined because he thought he was being singled out because of his Middle Eastern appearance… the student fell limp to the floor, again to avoid participating in what he considered a case of racial profiling… Tabatabainejad tried to “get the beating, the use of brutal force, to stop by shouting and causing people to watch…” [Link]
It’s much like the guy who provoked the throwdown at a George ‘Macaca’ Allen rally. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact of excessive use of force in either incident.
The more pain-inducing nonlethal weapons are developed, the more pain-inducing weapons will be used in situations which would have been de-escalated earlier. It’s just more convenient for the cops.
Your making big assumption here just because it’s in California. If you have conducted some kind of survey of the UCLA campus I would like to see it regarding this supposed “disdain”. The presumption is that most universities have students who don’t care for the campus police one bit, and it doesn’t matter the race or supposed bias of said campus, students are usually obxinous for one reason or another. I know my dorm caused nearly 300 false fire alarms during one year. That drove the campus security insane and they were always mad when they came out there.
..another tongue twisting last name will become familiar to Amreeka
I just saw the video. I am sickened. Taz and others who attend – please let us know what happens at the rally.