Video from YouTube (article below):
Police Taser UCLA Student of Iranian Descent
By Joshua Daniel Hershfield 11/18/06
University of California police officers shot a UCLA student,
23-year-old Mostafa Tabatabainejad, with a taser several times inside one of the
campus computer labs.
The UCLA Daily Bruin, reports:
At around 11:30
p.m., CSOs (Community Service Officers) 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.
Video shot from a student’s camera phone captured the
student yelling, “Here’s your Patriot Act, here’s your fucking abuse of
power,” while he struggled with the officers.
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.
“It was the
most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life,” said David
Remesnitsky, a 2006 UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident.
As the student and the officers were struggling, bystanders
repeatedly asked the police officers to stop, and at one point officers told
the gathered crowd to stand back and threatened to use a Taser on anyone who
got too close.
Laila Gordy, a fourth-year economics student who was present
in the library during the incident, said police officers threatened to shoot
her with a Taser when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number.
Gordy was visibly upset by the incident and said other
students were also disturbed.
“It’s a shock that something like this can happen at
UCLA,” she said. “It was unnecessary what they did.”
200 students marched to the UCLA police
station on Friday, demanding an independent investigation into the incident and
the suspension of the officers involved.
The University Chancellor, Norman Abrams, received a flood of emails and
phone calls from parents and alumni with concerns about the officers’
actions. Abrams announced Friday that an
independent group will be investigating the case.
“I want to assure them that the
UCLA campus is a safe environment. Student safety and treatment are of paramount
concern at UCLA,” Abrams said. “We plan to move ahead promptly with a
complete and unbiased review.”
The UCPD released a statement in which
spokeswoman Nancy Greenstein said that the checking of ID cards “is a
longstanding library policy to ensure the safety of students during the late
night hours.”
A security presence on campus to
protect students against sexual assault is one thing. Tasering a student who is acting in a
non-threatening manner in the name of “safety” is quite another.
Tabatabainejad’s attorney, Stephen
Yagman, said his client refused to show his ID because he thought he was being
singled out due to his Middle Eastern appearance. Tabatabainejad is of Iranian
descent but is a U.S.
citizen by birth and a resident of Los
Angeles. Since
9/11/01 Middle Eastern and Muslim people in the United States have been
increasingly insulted, threatened, and attacked, by individuals and on
institutional levels.
The government and media cultivated
state of fear that the United
States is currently awash in gives police
and military agencies increased and unchecked power. Electrocution is a torturous tactic that the
Military Commissions Act protects. It is
illustrative that shortly after the legalization of torture on so-called
“enemy combatants” we see similar tactics being used on students in
the United States
because they don’t have their ID cards. Both are justified with concerns for our safety. At some point, if we as a society plan on
truly confronting the current state of affairs, the questions may arise: Who
are the real “terrorists” in our midst? Who, what institutions, what ideologies
currently at work in the United
States, pose a threat to “liberty”?