Well now.....
I've just finished watching the 6+ minutes of the celphone video from the UCLA library...odd how news broadcasts only showed a few seconds of it...if you missed it, check it out on YouTube.
In support of the campus police:
a)The student in question certainly could have been a little calmer
b) The student should have had his ID, and produced it without being defensive.
Had these two things happened, I doubt he would have been tased.
In support of the student(s):
a) The security personnel certainly could have been a lot calmer
b) The UCLA cops were extremely abusive, even sadistic, in their actions, and treated this student like an animal. He was cuffed, tased (COULD not stand up on command because his legs were rubbery...from the tasing. Officer response? Tase him again)
c) The officers involved are OBLIGATED to give their ID (name, badge#, etc) on demand to any student who requests it. Reason? Just because someone is in the right uniform doesn't mean they are who they dress to be. Second reason? Those cops are paid for by the tuition of the kids that go there. They are there to PROTECT these kids, not hurt them. Third reason? If you're not proud enough of the job you've just done to put your name on it, you must have been doing something wrong.
Opinion:
In my estimation, the observers of these actions are just as much to blame as the cops. When cops, any cops, do this kind of thing, it is the duty of any citizen of this great land to intervene...physically if necessary. Just remember, there's more of us than there are of them. "They got the guns, but we got the numbers" as Jim Morrison wrote. There were enough students in this library to overpower, disarm, handcuff, and march these security guards back to their barracks. Abuses of power can only be overcome by immediate, unrelenting force. Not deadly force, only cowards use that. But a swarm of people making a citizen's arrest would have resolved this situation quickly and definitively. Police that act like this are cowards and liars, no better than child molesters. they do not deserve to be Americans.
Most in this country say we must remember Pearl Harbor, the Alamo, 9/11, D-Day. As if we could forget. These events are embedded in the bulk of our national psyche, via education and the press. But if we are to remember tragedies and battles like these, we must also remember and grieve equally about Kent State, Chicago in '68, the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia, and countless other incidents where our civil servants have turned on its citizenry and attacked.
I am pissed about this to ∞
Don't forget the Democratic National Convention in Chicago '68, where the cops were the ones who were rioting, not the citizens. Cops are out to catch criminals, not protect people, and that means that everybody is a criminal. Every single time you speak with a police officer he is trying to catch you in a crime, not protect you.
Power trips and tasers don't mix.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
Mahalo, bruddah! How's the surf?
I did mention the Chicago 1968 incident, but good lookin out.
hahaha, sorry, missed it.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
Well said. I agree 100% with that opinion, FWIW. Thaks for having the courage to say something that most
people won't say.
I appreciate your comment, and enjoyed it immensely. Having the courage to speak out, however, is easy. We need to act when we see these things happening...and I do not care if it is an incident like the one I blogged, or a simple DWB (driving while black) traffic stop gone bad. Any place you see this happening, tape it...write it down...record it in some fashion. File the reports, contact the press or broadcast media with the full story. Take pictures of the cops involved and post them on a telephone pole with the caption "Do you know me? I'm a racist cop."
Send those flyers to the police station, to their churches, their homes...paste it on the officers' personal vehicles.
BTW...ever wonder how the police seen on "COPS" treat their suspects when the camera crews aren't taping them?