Daily News: UCLA Student Nearly Tasered To Death

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Our police are filled with men and women who worked in Iraq and now are back home. The brutality in the far corner of our benighted empire leeches into the heart of the empire. Here is a shocking video filmed by students at UCLA of a student being repeatedly tasered because he forgot his ID in his dormitory!

The actual video of the police brutality (warning, the screams of the student are horrible).

Here is the 'official' version which of course, minimizes the gravity of this situation.

By Sara Taylor
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
[email protected]

An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times with a Taser has left the UCLA community questioning whether the university police officers' use of force was an appropriate response to the situation.

Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and then taken into custody when he did not exit the CLICC Lab in Powell Library in a timely manner. Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check at around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.

UCPD Assistant Chief of Police Jeff Young said the checks are a standard procedure in the library after 11 p.m.

"Because of the safety of the students we limit the use after 11 to just students, staff and faculty," Young said.

Young said the CSOs on duty in the library at the time went to get UCPD officers when Tabatabainejad did not immediately leave, and UCPD officers resorted to use of the Taser when Tabatabainejad did not do as he was told.

Barking orders. Yeah, this is how students should operate: like dogs, responding to barked orders. This police state tactic is all over America. Paranoid police, a number of whom have done time in Iraq, or who hang out with former soldiers from Iraq, are applying the same brutality they used when we first invaded Iraq on our own children at home.

I remember the invasion: the very first semester after 'liberation', troops swarmed around the Universities in Iraq and pushed students around. One day, not even a week into the school year, a student talked back and was gagged, hooded and beaten.

A week after that, another student shot a member of the invasion forces dead in the back of the head. This was the very beginning of the battle to drive Americans out of Iraq.

I keep saying, swaggering, sneering cops snapping orders cause more mayhem than a thousand criminals. The attitude, the chip on the shoulder hostility shown towards all and sundry undermines public order. Instead of reining in this tendency, I have repeatedly seen it expressed openly in public in the most inappropriate ways.

This includes beating peaceful protestors, for example. Like the police chief in Florida boasting about SHOOTING an unarmed, peaceful female demonstrator, repeatedly, because she was in the street, marching in a demonstration!

This is the way police states work: the police can be judge, jury and executioner with impunity. Training officers to be less violent and less confrontational is literally life and death. The war on drugs rapidly brutalized the police who decided breaking down doors and strip searching little girls while screaming at them is normal which is why a young girl in Iraq was stripped and raped by military soldiers wearing American uniforms.

This sort of mucked-up behavior stems from the same source: a contempt for human life, human dignity. The right wingers constantly boast about butchering fellow Americans, beating up fellow Americans, teaching fellow Americans a lesson via guns and clubs.

We see it online all the time, we hear it in the streets, anyone who dares to demonstrate against 'free trade' gets it by the ton, minorities get is at frequent intervals, what on earth is going on here?

This insecurity at home is why passing lots of police state laws NEVER makes us safe. Even bowing to fascist power doesn't make it one whit safer! Civilized behavior is not that hard to do! I have done dozens of citizen's arrests over the years and it is amazing how LITTLE violence is actually needed to get cooperation from someone!

In this case, a student without ID who is already leaving the building is not menacing anyone. The police could have suggested they walk casually back to the dorm together and check out his status because of the curfew rules on campus. They can apologize for the inconvinience, etc. This isn't hard to do.

But they came on swaggering and tough. They came on looking to make a point and to get obedience. They probably privately look down on the students, this is QUITE COMMON. I remember some such men in my own college days. No University should tolerate patrols that hate or look down on the students. This is...insane.

Over and over, my blog has covered Homeland Security goon squads harrassing teachers, bus passengers, people passing checkpoints, etc.

In November 2005, Deborah Davis was reading a book on a Denver bus when a guard of a nearby federal building got on board and demanded everyone show their ID. Davis refused, leading the guard to "call on federal cops, who then dragged Davis off a public bus, handcuffed her, shoved her into the back seat of a police car and drove off to a police station within the Federal Center."

How long before Americans are tortured with taser weapons on the streets for refusing to show identification on a routine basis?

How long before we are forced to wear shock collars like some bizarre science fiction movie, where our masters can discipline us on a whim for not obeying orders?

It may be a lot sooner than we think.

Tasers are extremely dangerous.

Robert Anglen
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 5, 2006 01:20 PM

The Arizona Republic, using computer searches, autopsy reports, police reports, media reports and Taser's own records, has identified 167 cases in the United States and Canada of death following a police Taser strike since September 1999. In 27 cases, medical examiners said Tasers were a cause, a contributing factor or could not be ruled out in someone's death. In 35 cases, coroners and other officials reported the stun gun was not a factor. Below is a synopsis of each case. The Republic requested autopsy reports for all of the cases and so far has received 50.

The student in today's police brutality video was tasered at least six times in four minutes! He could have died. I still remember Kent State. Students were shot dead for pitching some pretty small rocks from a great distance, one dead student was going from one class to another! Reckless use of military force on our campuses is absurd.

Here are some cases of people dying when tasered.

In Glendale, Colo., Glen Leyba was on his apartment floor, thrashing violently. A police officer, hoping to control him, stunned him three times, before he died. While the coroner blamed a drug overdose, the family blames multiple, unnecessary electric shocks, Andrews reports.

Shelly Leyba, Glen's sister, says, "Glen was in a medical emergency, down on the ground, no threat."

In Indiana, inmate James Borden was stunned six times by an officer, then died on the jailhouse floor. Borden was also high on drugs, and again his family blames overuse of the TASER. "They juiced him to death," charges Steve Borden, James' brother.

On Long Island, David Glowczenski was suffering a mental breakdown, so his family called police for help.

His sister, Jean Griffin, says, "We called them for safety because he was disoriented. …And an hour later he was dead."

Glowzenski died after a confrontation in which an officer stunned him nine times with a TASER, and he wasn't on drugs or alcohol, Andrews notes. "He committed no crime; he didn't do anything wrong," Griffin says.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are some of the organizations trying to stop the use of tasers. This weapon should not be allowed at all, the police excuse that the would SHOOT people dead if they can't taser them is totally irresponsible and insane. I thought the police only shoot people who have guns or a very nasty weapon in hand! Not students missing their ID or ladies fumbling for their purse or mentally ill people having convulsions on the floor.

UCLA has an annual award for their cops which is called 'the Meritorious Service/Taser Award'!!!!

Applause

At its first annual recognition event, the UC Police Department at UCLA commended employees for stellar achievement throughout the year. Officer Dan Jermansen received two special honors: the Mothers Against Drunk Driving Award for his role in teaching seminars on alcohol abuse and for leading the department in DUI arrests, and the Sworn Employee of the Year Award for consistently exhibiting professional ideals through his commitment to community policing and excellent police work. The Lifesaver Award was given to Officer Brian Washburn for administering CPR and saving the life of a 78-year-old man after he collapsed and went into cardiac arrest. The Meritorious Service/Taser Award was presented to Officers Joseph Eubank, Ethan Shear, Kevin Kay and Dan Jermansen for successfully subduing a patient without harm after he threatened staff at the Neuropsychiatric Hospital with metal scissors. And the Non-Sworn Employee of the Year Award went to dispatcher Penny Summers for her exemplary performance on the job….

Speechless. My husband has panic attacks. This is our greatest fear. Instead of using other means of controlling people panicking, they are now simply surrounding them and tasering them! This is extremely disgusting. In the old days, the hospital staff used 'straight jackets' which were an innovation created to stop the beatings of the mentally ill.

Today, they taser them nearly immediately. The excuse of 'they have a weapon' might hold water except we have proof like this frightful video here, they taser unarmed people who don't even have a pair of blunt scissors, not on occasion but FREQUENTLY.

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Comments

The student, an Iranian-American, has hired a promenent civil rights attorney, Stephen Yagman.

The campus police and chancellor's contact info:
Chief of Police, Karl T. Ross 310 825-1633 [email protected]
Captain, John Adams 310 825-4406 [email protected]
Norman Abrams 310-825-2151 [email protected]

In our day, students would have stormed the Admin offices. There is a protest planned, with video to be put up on YouTube or perhaps this campus cam will show some action: http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/bruincam/default.htm

Posted by: Mike | November 17, 2006 at 01:58 PM