Video captures UCLA security assaulting student with taser

Campus security at UCLA administered electric shock through a taser device against Mostopha Tabatabainejad, a student who posed no visible threat simply because he was brown and unable to produce a student ID card. As the student fell to the ground in pain, campus officers demanded he stand up and, when Tabatabainejad was unable, officers tased him again. And again. And again.

All of this was in full view of a library full of witnesses, caught on camera from a variety of video cell phones, and possibly by UCLA security camera. When horrified bystanders asked the officers to stop and demanded their name and badge numbers, officers threatened to tase them as well.

According to witnesses [1]:

At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.

The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.

The student began to yell "get off me," repeating himself several times.

It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition …

As the student was screaming, UCPD officers repeatedly told him to stand up and said "stop fighting us." The student did not stand up as the officers requested and they shot him with the Taser at least once more.

After you spend six years telling Americans that Muslims and brown people are the enemy, this is what you get. Be warned, this video is pretty horrifying:

 [2]  

Now to be fair, this video doesn't tell the full story (which hopefully was caught by regular campus security cameras). It may be that campus security witnessed this dude being a jerk when an entire library full of people said he wasn't. But it doesn't really matter, does it? Being an ass, refusing to leave, going limp, or anything else nonviolent is civil disobediance at worst, and by no means worthy of an assualt by police. For the sake of argument, let's say he was behaving in a threatening manner - that would only account for the first electrocution. But repeated assaults after the victim had been incapacitated??

UPDATE:

The Bruin ran an update with comments from the ACLU. Apparently, threatening force against someone requesting your badge number is a crime (you know, in addition to illegally electrocuting and torturing someone for refusing to stand up while brown):

During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would "get Tased too." At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser.

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.

"It is absolutely illegal to threaten anyone who asks for a badge - that's assault," he said.

But according to a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001, a charge of three to five seconds can result in immobilization for five to 15 minutes, which would mean that Tabatabainejad could have been physically unable to stand when the officers demanded that he do so.

"It is a real mistake to treat a Taser as some benign thing that painlessly brings people under control," said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.

"The Taser can be incredibly violent and result in death," Eliasberg said.

According to an ACLU report, 148 people in the United States and Canada have died as a result of the use of Tasers since 1999.

Listen people, it is vital that these incidents don’t go unanswered. If UCLA doesn’t feel the repercussions of this incident in a very loud, forceful, and public manner, it will make it that much easier for the next maniacal police officers to do it. Believe it or not, we are not a white, Christian nation. We are and always have been a nation of immigrants and racial profiling in a pluralistic society is not only sick and wrong, but it is illegal. The police and the government work for us, not the other way around – and they will do their jobs in the manner that we demand. Our silence in cases like this amounts to nothing but further acquiescence.

Here is the appropriate contact information for UCLA if anyone wants to express their concerns:

Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams
Telephone: 310-825-2151
Fax: 310-206-6030
Email: chancellor@conet.ucla.edu [3]

Be polite but firm. Tell them you are disturbed by what you saw in the video and would like to know what is being done. Then thank them and hang up. It will take only a few minutes of your day and, above all, will make it clear to UCLA that they are being watched and this is not going away.  Then come back and leave a comment telling us how it went.

Comments

Bob (not verified)Sat, 2006-11-18 15:11

Typical beurocrats

I called on friday afternoon and they told me that the matter was under investigation and they couldn't comment until it was completed.