My Two Cents: The UCLA Taser Incident

Last week, my friend asked me if I seen the taser video. At first, I thought it was one of the numerous stupid Internet videos with idiots tasing each other or doing faceplants. “It’s the UCLA Police tasing a student…”

Police brutality? Oh my! A must see for my curious little eyes. However, after seeing the video, I beg to differ from the numerous outcries of brutality. In fact, I think the police did their jobs. Sure, the outcome isn’t as pleasant to the eyes (especially to the student), but the police did what’s right to remove an individual (Mostafa Tabatabainejad) who is behaving violently with words and causing a unnecessary scene.

Now before you carpet-bomb me with whatever WMDs Mr. Webster had to offer, let us review the poorly captured video. We’ll be using the Youtube video as our reference. Click here for the link.

In this video, I find some suspicion that the student was causing a political-charged scene more than being a victim. At 0:30 in the video clip,there was an unclear conflict (a possible tase?) followed by muffled shouts. At 0:50, Tabatabainejad starts his political speech on the Patriot Act and says (at 1:00) he won’t leave (keep that in mind). At this point, I question if he was really a victim or trying to invoke a scene in the library. This speech is continued and becomes more audible coherent around 1:14 with

“I got tased for no reason. I was leaving this God-forsaken place. Here’s your justice at work.”

Well..then stand up and leave! I thought he said he was refusing to move away at the 1:00 mark in the video. There is inconsistency in his shouting and by this time, he is behaving more irrationally than ever. After that, the police continued to command him to stand up and leave. But he continues to shout (incoherent words). He was later dragged out of the library with him still conscious and shouting.

In this situation, I believe that the police acted the best possible way to remove such an irrational person. Now, if he was tased, shaking uncontrollably with foam in his mouth, then I can say that he is being abused. However, he was conscious and coherent enough to continue his ramblings throughout the video. Furthermore, the options that the police had is limited and they used the most nonlethal way to remove the irrational man who refuses to comply no matter what. Consider this excerpt from University of Illinois professor John Bambernek in his post titled “UCLA Student Picks a Fight with Police and Looses“,

“The student was asked repeatedly to leave by library security and refused. This led to the police being called. When the police tried to ensure he left, he began to swear, threaten, and physically resist them. There are only a small number of ways to force an unruly individual to do what you want. You could physically strike them and encourage a hand-to-hand combat situation with a police office, which would likely threaten their own safety. You could beat the suspect with a baton causing no small amount of pain and physical harm. Or you could use a Taser, on the setting which they used, to encourage cooperation. In all but the cases of individuals high on drugs, Tasers do not cause fatalities. They choose the safest option for an uncooperative individual.”

Interesting huh? That means that the police could ether a) beat the living daylights out of him and drag him out or b) tase him with the proper settings to force him to comply. Obviously the police uses the nonlethal way.

What about the racial profiling argument? Since Mr. Tabatabainejad is of Iranian descent, many argue that he was a poor victim of racial profiling. However, I asked my sister (who just graduated this past year from UCLA) and she said that the UCPD checks everyone’s ID. With that in mind, where’s the racial profiling?

In conclusion (because I’m getting tired of watching the video over and over and writing this long post), Tabatabainejad was not a victim. He was just a foolish guy trying to fight the police. He broke the rules. He whined, trying to create a scene with the police and refuse to cooperate and he was rightfully subdued and taken care of. As simple as that. Sadly, with all the anti-police sensation around this news, many are instantly making their own judgments with poorly worded titles (such as “Iranian UCLA Student Tasered by Campus Police or “Iranian-American Student Abused By UCLA UCPD With Tazer GUN” without seeing things through.

With this, I’m tired and we can discuss this face to face if you catch up with me. Thank you for reading my two cents.

—
note: yes…poorly written post.

~ by Enoch Chu on November 22, 2006.