Horrible Things That Happen to People: Police

So, as you may have heard by now, there was a bad incident in one of the UCLA libraries where a student was tasered up to five times by campus police. He was asked to show his student ID and refused, and he was then asked to leave. He refused to do this as well.

However (and this isn't in every news article), when the campus cops showed up, he grabbed his backpack and started to leave. One of the cops grabbed the student's arm, and the student stopped and told the cop to let go. Another cop approached, and the student began yelling, "get off me!" Then the police tasered the student for the first time. The student fell to the floor and cried out in pain, telling the police he had a medical issue. The cops repeatedly told him to stand up, and tasered him again when he would not (or could not) do so. The student repeatedly cried, "I said I'd leave!" and variants thereof. The cops also told the other students who had congregated that if they didn't stay back, they'd get tasered as well. The student continued to struggle and was eventually shocked five times.

And, of course, he was Muslim.

73 people died from tasers in 2005. There was a recent death caused by tasers in my home state of Wisconsin, where a schizophrenic man died after being shocked twice. He was not shocked because he was being violent, only because he didn't want to put his hands behind his back so that he could be handcuffed.

80% of suspects shocked by tasers were not brandishing any weapon. Often "painful compliance" techniques are used by police on peaceful protesters, especially when they are in large groups. Note that tasers are not meant to be used in this way; they are meant to be used when cops would otherwise use a gun, to decrease mortalities. Also note that to have a license for a taser, one must themselves be shocked by one. So these cops knew exactly how it felt to be shocked. And they also knew that they were only making it more difficult for the student to stand up as they shocked him.

See the video shot by a student witnessing the event at YouTube. It's pretty haunting, and you can see a lot that didn't make it to the news articles (e.g. the student repeating "I said I'd leave!"). You can read a statement by the acting chancellor of UCLA here. There's news articles everywhere, you can start here or here, but my favorite article is here.