This is all academic, but the bottom line? There was no danger here, there was no threat. Is this how we want to be treated as a society? Yes the guy is a punk. But hey, so are lots of folks.
Shouldn’t this militaristic attitude be focused on some of our other problems? Should the campus police even be official cops?

When I was in school, folks also did stupid stuff. The difference? We didn’t have real police. Most of these people grew up and became fine mebers of our community. Presently? We would have all beeen fed mood elevators in elementary school. Also, a lot of us would have police records for any of the collage pranks we pulled.

Back on topic, though, it does seem just a little contrived. While perhaps multiple tazerings were over the top, I wasn’t there so I’m not so sure I can say. The punk definately deserved at least one, that’s for certain. As far as I’m concerned, the rest were icing on the cake a prudent precaution in order to ensure compliance.

As an aside, I am death on police brutality. I think it is an elementary betrayal of the public by its protectors and I think it should be punished heavily. However, I also believe that the police deserve the benefit of the doubt. Theirs is an awesome burden of responsability and, let’s be honest, they’re the ones who’s butts are on the line. My philosophy is: comply with the officer! If you think he’s dead wrong, bring it up later. If you escalate a situation to the point where he has to wonder if he’ll get to go home at the end of shift, you deserve the beating he will most likely administer. From everything I have ever been told (by cops, MPs, security guys etc), it’s usually tactical, not personal. When it gets personal, that’s where I draw the line.

BTW, Rusty, that’s probably why you got hit. You asked a juiced up cop who is dealing with a difficult situation a question that frankly could be interpreted as rabble rousing (justifiable as it may have been). I don’t say it was the best way to contain the situation, but I gaurantee it was the quickest! Incidentally, I hope you weren’t charged with anything.

Apparently this tazered dude was nudged to do this by a group of activists. A student called in and said that all students get checked for ID cards, after 11 p.m., which is when this happened. This guy pretended to go limp and didn’t cooperate and was then tazered, with the lighter method of the two possible. Then all h–l broke loose and voila, in less than 24 hours there was a protest.

The officer was interviewed today – heard him speak on the radio – he calmly said that he did everything according to “past 11 p.m. procedures” and looks forward to the investigation and to talking to even the Muslim community afterward.

Interesting is this – when the tazered student was taken away, after he tried to organize other students to protest with him, he shouted something like this “that’s the Patriot Act for you and am I the only martyr in this?”

You must know who’s side John and Ken are on, incidentally right out of a huge victory of having had mayor Villaraigosa veto a $2.7 million award to a Black fireman (claiming racism of course) who called himself proudly “the big dog”; he’d been tasting a bit of dog food on spaghetti, after he played all sorts of tricks on his peers (one of which was very anti-Jew and anti-gay, see 2nd picture). John and Ken got the pictures from other firemen,ratted out the council members (who’d voted 11 to 1 to settle, with no pictures seen), organized a cash-drive for the families of the 5 recently deceased firemen and made a mockery of the system. Villaraigosa got the message. Good on John and Ken and citizens like them.

He was named officer of the year in 2001.

I nominate him for officer of the year for 2006.

I sure wouldn’t consider my self progressive Jummy.

i’m certain i wasn’t addressing you.

I sure wouldn’t consider my self progressive Jummy. I am more of what you call a capitalist. It may surprise you, but we are in to making money in the oil patch. Are you a progressive?
Dusty,
This is an argument for attorneys and I don’t claim to be one. The argument the attorney is making is;
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.
Of course it is hair splitting, but it is true, that they are required by law to provide their badge number to any concerned citizen. Why do you think they show them in the first place? Do I think someone should be arrested, no. But I do think this was absurd. If anyone should have been tasered it was those Imams standing in the isle of the plane yelling Allah Akbar.
My second response is this, which is hair splitting;
Well aside from the policy which states to maximize the safety of all individuals involved, the following; , 4C, 5, 6 he wasn’t under arrest when tasered, 7Ci, Cii.
Still, if you say a student must leave because he doesn’t have his student Id and you are to lazy to do a simple check, and you need six police to deal with a situation that could have been rectified by getting a drivers license or anything, then taser him on the way out because he ask you to let go of his arm, and then arrest him for resisting arrest .. arrest of resisting? When no one was a t danger,
Then I have to say this whole thing is hair splitting which is why I referred to Libby. Another Kafue.

thanks for the props. honestly, all i did was cut out ambient mumbling. the theater of it is so thick, you’d think it was parody.

modern progressives have overcome this by adopting a sort of hyperstalinism, where everyone, in the face of divergences wide and narrow, can be an agent provacateur or a rightwing cia false flag operation to the extent and duration that it is usefull to position oneself that way to skirt others’ risk. one can see this in the way the social justice movement responded during the jesse macbeth issue. pepperspray media was the video collective of the seattle area imc. they were highly regarded for many years and indeed up until the moment it became clear that the jesse macbeth fraud they produced was never going to fly in the face of the debunkings. suddenly, pepperspray was a rightwing false front, but never “purged” and only for as long as the hoax was popularly discussed. now pepperspray continues as the seattle imc’s media collective and i’ve even seen some intrepid progressives attack the debunkings in an attempt to rehabilitate macbeth’s representativeness.

so, remember: your nose knows.

Pavlov proved it works with dogs, it may just work with libs.

As you can see the cops used reasonable discretion in not just tazing those who requested the badge numbers, nor did they arrest them. They did get a warning not to interfere and that was that, even though, in my opinion, the reason and manner of the request had a lot of intimidating overtone to it. Yet those bystanders still got the badge numbers, didn’t they. As for the “law is the law”, as you remark, I read the UCPD policy that has been linked and it doesn’t seem a clear cut violation of that policy to me (and others), so discretion as well as the subjective understanding of the circumstances is the key issue here and it is not exclusively a matter of “the law is the law”.

And what’s with bringing all these other story threads into the discussion, especially that last one about Libby? They are interfering and distracting from the subject at hand.

Infidel,
Yes, that is all that I am saying. If we can’t have discourse, if we all have to tow some line, then we are done as a party. And, although I’d love to side with the libertarians, they have been taken over by the left. So where dose that leave us?

Rusty says …

On many things I am conservative, on my things I am not.

Rusty, you’re about as conservative as Rosie is straight. Since you started posting on this site, I don’t believe I remember a single post that you were not on the opposite side of the argument. You’re a Grebrook clone.

As they say, you may beat the charge, but not the ride.