November 16, 2006
Cellphone Photographers Capture a Harrowing Incident at UCLA
YouTube may help end the careers of a few police officers at the University of California at Los Angeles — and if it does, it’s unlikely that students at the university will shed many tears.
Last night the Daily Bruin reported that campus police officers had shot a student several times with a Taser after the student refused to leave a library computer lab. The article featured some strong words: A UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident called it “the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life.” But what really struck a chord with blogs — where news of the incident has spread like wildfire — was a harrowing video recording made by a student with a cellphone camera.
The video, which was posted almost immediately on YouTube, shows an officer repeatedly shooting the student (identified by the Los Angeles Times as Mostafa Tabatabainejad) with a Taser as he screams in agony and rage and other students try to intervene. To say the least, it’s hard to watch.
The incident is, among other things, a case study in how quickly news spreads in the age of YouTube. Just as cellphone documentarians and online pundits helped harden resistance to Gallaudet University’s presidential-selection process (The Chronicle, November 10), outraged bloggers and blog aggregators may have turned the fracas at UCLA into nationwide news. —Brock Read
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This video shows some of the most disgusting abuse of power that I have ever witnessed. This is probably an everyday occurance at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, but this should never happen on a college campus. How the hell could anybody get up and walk after being tazed and beaten for almost 10 minutes. You can be sure these officers will be protected by system. Thank god for the Patriot Act, where we’ve lost more rights and liberties in the last 6 years than any period in my memory. I believe the founders of our constitution would turn over in their grave if they could witness this kind of treatment to any individual in America, whether they were a citizen or not. Somebody help us. Maybe we need the United Nations to help the citizens of the United States now.
— Ted Henderson Nov 17, 12:46 AM #
Abuses of power should not be acceptable anywhere any time Mr. Henderson.
— Joe Mullarkey Nov 17, 12:11 PM #
I can’t wait to see how UCLA will respond to this… I think too it’s important to remember (and so no one is going to say it much) that this kind of brutality and fear—based (racist?) abuse of power is the norm all over the country. What I want to know is, who trained this taser-wielding maniac, what screening processes was he subjected to, and how many times has he committed similar outrages before he was caught?
— Kate Friend Nov 17, 01:42 PM #
I wonder how much objectivity you are using when commenting on the situation after watching this video. Do you know what happened before the video started? Have you ever been tazed? Can you see into the mind of the student? The police? The LA Times article says that the student was asked to show his ID since it was after 11PM at night, something that is required under the institution’s policy. The student refused and the campus police were called in. This is the point at which the accounts are disputed. Witnesses claim that the student was leaving when he was approached by police who grabbed the student, to which the student replied “get off me”. If this witness account is accurate, put yourself in the shoes of the campus police. Someone, (remember the police do not even know if he is a student) just failed to comply with university policy and would not show ID. By not showing his ID he has no right to be in the building. Then he decides he is going to exit the building and attempts to avoid the campus police. Not suspicious at all is it? After doing something like that, you don’t just get to walk away. Let me ask you, if the campus security and police just let the person go and that person turns around and does something horrible, like what has recently happened at a number of schools around the country in past months, how many of you would be screaming “how could that happen”, “why weren’t the policies enforced”, “why did the police let him walk away”? Let’s look at this a little more objectively.
In the video he is screaming at the top of his lungs “Don’t touch me.” Perhaps this person doesn’t understand how things work. You don’t have the right to tell the police not to touch you after you’ve just engaged in some highly suspicious activity and failing to comply with policies and/or orders to exit the premises. Then the suspect immediately jumps into “here’s your f@#$ing patriot act… here’s your abuse of power” and “get the f$#% off of me”. Is it possible that this person was baiting the situation? Is it possible?
— Anonymous Nov 17, 04:41 PM #
I wouldn’t be surprised if the powers that be went balls-out after the person who shot the video. Cops don’t like getting busted.
— MHT Nov 17, 05:56 PM #
It’s unfortunate that the audio portion of this incident was captured in it’s entirety but the video was not. It leaves too much to question. Did he pull away from officers, or do anything else that was interpreted as aggressive or dangerous? Did officers attempt to control the subject using a lesser form of control, only to have this guy resisit those attempts? We don’t know. -“How the hell could anybody get up and walk after being tazed and beaten for almost 10 minutes”. Easy, I’ve been tazed and I jumped up afterwards. When the shock of the tazer is over your left feeling 100%. I didn’t see this guy getting beaten on video, but I did hear him screaming like a crazed maniac. Keep an open mind and be carefull about forming an opinion when we clearly don’t have all the information.
— Anonymous Nov 18, 11:09 AM #
More information in today’s Chronicle article confirms that campus police most likely were acting within their purview when, after repeated attempts to get the student to comply with policy and/or exit the building – something that both parties agree happened – “Both sides concur that when officers attempted to escort him — Mr. Yagman [the student’s recently hired lawyer] said the police grabbed the student’s arm — Mr. Tabatabainejad went limp and fell to the floor.” they employed the taser. Under general order 05-01 (Tasers), section 5.b (Criteria for Use) of the university’s regulations Posted by the Daily Bruin, it states the following “Authorized personnel may use a Taser when circumstances known and perceived to the individual officer at the time indicate that the application of the Taser is reasonable to subdue or control: [b] A potentially violent or potentially physically resistive subject who has verbally or physically demonstrated an intention to resist.” Between his going limp and his caught-on-video comments “Don’t touch me” and “Get the F%$& off of me”, it seems that police were right in line with policy. Perhaps much more caution and objective analysis should be employed, at least by the people who post here – since higher education is supposed to be the home of objectivity – before jumping to conclusions.
— Anonymous Nov 20, 09:45 AM #
I did not see how the person was physically responding to the cops. What happenedbefore the camera started rolling?
Did the Library staff feel threatened? Why was Security called? It’s not a clear picture of what happened. There are a lot of people out there who don’t function at 100%. If he was reacting so strongly, was he on anything? Too many unanswered questions to rush to judgement on who was at fault.
— Bill Skeat Nov 30, 12:15 PM #