Posted on 11/17/2006 12:03:43 AM PST by BurbankKarl
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.
Attorney Stephen Yagman said he plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing the UCLA police of "brutal excessive force," as well as false arrest. The lawyer also provided the first public account of the Tuesday night incident at UCLA's Powell Library from the student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a 23-year-old senior.
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.
UCLA officials declined to respond directly to Yagman's statements, saying they still were conducting their internal investigation of the incident.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
What a funny theology. Christ states he died for our sins (although excessive legalism is no doubt one of them).
Your opinion that tasers represent excessive force is only your opinion. Others see them as lower on the force continuum than batons, choke hold, etc. Current data suggests that taser pain compliance reduces physical injury to both officers and arrestees.
No one doubts that abuse of power occurs, but your contention that this is an archetypical example of this is spurious, IMO.
This punk is unlikely to win anything unless the University cowers and caves in to settle. If the Universtiy were smart they would permanently expel him and institute required "safety" seminars on proper comportment and compliance with school rules for the rest of the student body. If they've got time for protests, they've got time for some "re-education". LOL
Won't happen, but sure would make my day if it did.
Tazers were the new generation of non-lethal weapons. Pretty sooon, they'll bring out incapacitating foam to the library, and the kid won't have any choice.
"167 cases of death following stun-gun use"
This is a nice number, but it does not reflect the complete picture. It does not show that any of these deaths were caused by the Taser. It does show that restrained people do occasionally die. This number is not compared to the total number of Taser / Stun-gun deployments. It is not compared to the total number of deaths that occur as the result of arrests. It does not show if the number of in custody deaths have gone up or down where Tasers have been available to the police. It is just a number without context.
Whatever. The tazer is better than a baton or peppermace? Consider that hard force tactics such as a baton would have not been realistic as the kid wasn't in an active agressor mode..at least not that we could see on the video. Pepper mace, if it was in foam form would have been ok, otherwise the area was too closed in and just about everyone could have been affected by the mist of the spray as the air currents in the room spread droplets of the spray around. The only two real options was to Tazer or tackle. They chose to tazer. Me personally, I prefer to tackle...but then my department's policy allows me that oprtion, perhaps theirs doesn't.
I saw the video on youtube, it's a farce. The useable video the amature videographer managed to get clarly showed some manner of active resistance by the suspect. This guy was kicking and thrashing about while officers were holding on to him and trying to get him to stand up.
I would have used a more hands on approach to the guy myself. Joint locks, especially a wrist lock can do wonders to encourage compliance. It all depends on what their department policy allowed them to do.
Part of the problem with the situation goes all the way back to Rodney King. The King situation caused law enforcement to look for ways to minimize officer/offender physical conflict. Hence the Tazer has seen it's useage rise rapidly as the technology of the weapon improved. So here, the officers chose to engage a suspect with a Tazer. Since I've seen and heard nothing that would change my mind...I still defer to their judgement on what they did...they were there, I wasn't.
And the little jerk would still be sueing, no doubt.
Yep...wonder what the "student" will get for his cut of the action.....
Boy this nation really misses Ellis Island. They would have quickly cut this stupid name down to "Tabata" before giving his ancestors entry.
Sounds to me like he planned this entire incident from start to finish.
Oh for heavens sake....get a grip. I'm a cop, and your drivel here is about as offensive as it gets. Cops are living stuck dealing with crap that would make you vomit if you had to deal with it. This kid clearly was asking to get shocked, and he got his little happy wish. It is sad that folks die from Tazer shocks....but they also doe from pepper mace, baton strikes, and empty hand control tactics....almost all of such deaths are accidental. A tiny minority of them are a result of abusive behavior.
The fact is when people choose to resist the police and refuse to comply with commands...they take a risk of injury when they do so. it's just reality. Don't want to be tazed? Don't want to be pepper sprayed? Don't want to get shot? Don't want to be hit with a baton? Don't want to be wrapped up into a painful empty hand control tactic? Well follow instructions....don't resist...and if you feel the arrest is unjust...or unlawful....hire a lawyer and file copmlaints, law suits or both. If you comply you help your case, if you resist you hurt it. Common sense is a neat thing isn't it?
Oh please, where is conclusive evidence that tasers kill people. You look at the reported deaths and note that extreme cocaine or methamphetimine intoxication was also present or the actual cause of death in most cases.
They have just as many or more who die while being restrained without taser use for the same dang reason, they are so coked or amped up.
But the anti taser types don't ever do a real comparison between deaths of arrestees at look at the taser-non tasered death rates.
No, they just claim because a taser was used that the taser caused the death. Let me just note that no one has successfully pursued a wrongful death claim against Taser, Inc. even though they are targeted by Amnesty International, the Trial Lawyers Association and the ACLU.
That should be a big clue to you that somebody is full of propraganda.
Um.....the kid could have been hurt far worse with a baton. Like ohhh...a slight mis with the baton could send your kneeecap to places it was not designed to go, or even break a leg. Pepper mace is not used with a slight whiff. I've been trained to spray for one full second, ...trust me that's not a whiff....and if if an officer is using a spray instead of a foam....there will be a mist that will affect the officer and bystanders, especially in the enclosed are of the room they were in.
If I'm spraying someone, I don't want them to flee, I want to arrest them....to bring them under control so they or myself don't get hurt in an altercation. If someone has to get hurt..better the suspect than me.
Unless technology has fast tracked in the last few months that I don't know of... How did someone with a cell phone record over six minutes of this incident with the quality the video is presenting? My daughter and I have moto razer (whatever) phones that only record maybe 20 seconds of video with meh resolution. I think it was a setup and someone had good quality video recorder at the ready to capture it. You can't get that quality out of a cell phone. I promise it was a staged event.
Calling my post drivel does absolutely nothing toward making your cogent.
Funny, throughout history when the rights of the individual have been taken away it has too often been said that it would be "for their own safety". I don't want or need that brand of safety. As a good and law-biding American citizen I'd choose to remain safe from renegade police officers.
This incident is not an isolated incident. Google the 2004 world series in Boston where the police killed a young girl by shooting tear gas bombs into the bleachers. Real safe for everybody. NOT. Also let me remind you to look at my previous posts, I AM NOT and HAVE NOT and WILL NOT suggest that abuse of power is a given with police. The contrary is true. That does not give "cover" to those who do abuse the sacred public trust. Stop justifying the actions of bad apples within the force. That one bad apple you may be blindly defending can spoil the whole bunch. Why in heaven's name are millions of US gang members with depots of illegal weapons enjoying the comfort of not be tazed while a little whimp in a campus library is targeted? Yeah, I thougt so.
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