ACLU Says UCLA Taser Cops are Guilty of “Illegal Assault” on Bystanders
Posted on November 20, 2006
Update: I may be eating my words soon. I still stand by my original calling to hear all sides before jumping to conclusions. However, the UCLA officer has a history.
He’s been the subject of excessive-force complaints before, including once in 2003 when he shot a homeless man during a struggle in one of the dorms and again in 1990 when UCLA fired him for having allegedly choked a student with his nightstick.
I knew it wouldn’t take long for the ACLU to chime in on this one.
“It is a real mistake to treat a Taser as some benign thing that painlessly brings people under control,” said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.
“The Taser can be incredibly violent and result in death,” Eliasberg said.
According to an ACLU report, 148 people in the United States and Canada have died as a result of the use of Tasers since 1999.
During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would “get Tased too.” At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser.
Such a threat of the use of force by a law enforcement officer in response to a request for a badge number is an “illegal assault,” Eliasberg said.
“It is absolutely illegal to threaten anyone who asks for a badge [number],” that’s assault,” he said.
Many bloggers out there think the campus cops did overreact. I’m still under the impression that the kid in question was the one that overreacted. The entire thing could have been avoided if the kid would have cooperated. The main question comes to whether or not the cop’s were excessive in controlling the situation. I’m in the minority in thinking they were not. Maybe I am wrong, but I think the ACLU claiming that a verbal threat is equivalant to an assault is a bit of an overstatement. I wouldn’t doubt that this entire episode was provoked on purpose in order to create a political controversy. The civil libertarians will milk it for all its worth.
More on the tasermaina!
Ace takes a look at the UCPD’s guidelines on the use of tasers.
Hot Air has info from another (alleged) UCLA student.
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Illegal Activities, News
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23 Responses to “ACLU Says UCLA Taser Cops are Guilty of “Illegal Assault” on Bystanders”
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“The entire thing could have been avoided if the kid would have cooperated.”
That’s always the case if authority or force is used inappropriately. Overblown example being: that whole KKK group and their violence wouldn’t have existed if the blacks had just stayed slaves. I can’t think of a more benign example, but the analog is accurate if not the intensity.
Incidentally, interviews are showing that all the kid asked was that all the white people around him have their IDs checked as well as a part of the ‘random’ ID check. “Obviously” the officers refused. After things escalated Tabatabainejad went limp. I don’t care who you are, or if you agree with his accusation of profiling, but tasing someone who has gone limp in protest is ultra-inappropriate.
It isn’t overblown to point out that people die from tasers. Imagine being pulled over for speeding by a belligerent officer. Do you think it would be inappropriate if that officer threatened you with a taser for asking for his badge number? Tabatabainejad hadn’t even committed a ‘crime’ as serious as speeding. Those watching had done even less than that. That kind of behavior is illegal outright, and much worse when it comes from those in authority.
I watched the video Jimmy and the kid was obviously provoking this entire thing as a political stunt. They gave him plenty of time to recover between tasings. He was certainly able to scream at the top of his lungs about the Patriot Act.
As far as whether or not it is “appropriate” for an officer to threaten with a taser in a situation like this isn’t what I’m arguing. I’m saying it wasn’t equivalent to assault. Besides, if I were stopped for something I would cooperate and talk to a lawyer after the fact on my rights. I wouldn’t make a scene out of it. Furthermore if I did ask for a badge number it wouldn’t be in a mob setting. They didn’t just ask for the badge numbers they screamed at the cops in a large group. If I were the cop I would have felt threatened.
Obviously the phraseology is grandiose. Though, even with that said, Assault is the appropriate crime. Assault clearly covers “unlawful threat or attempt to do bodily injury to another”. There are exceptions for officers effecting an arrest or trying to prevent a crime, of course, but that makes the question here is if these exceptions apply, namely whether the threat and the arrest procedure were lawful.
In any case, as over the top as it sounds, assault is clearly the appropriate charge for what took place which was a threat to do bodily injury.
As for the running analogy: the whole point is that you’re trying to get a badge number. I’ve also watched the video. They were yelling, but the crowd was hardly violent. And if we’re going to discuss ways of diffusing the situation I would say that while one option would be for Tabatabainejad to give up his protest, the other would be for the cops to back down. It’s not like they were trying to take down a murderer and the crowd was stopping them. They could have easily backed off, or diffused the situation in a hundred different ways, none of which would have required a taser, or threatening the crowd with a taser.
Look, we disagree on a lot of things, but you must see that every time there came a crossroads for the officers to escalate the situation or to diffuse it, the chose the bravado-filled, threatening and authoritarian road.
Actually they gave the guy numerous opportunities to cooperate. He chose to escalate the situation by refusing to do so. Listen to the video again. When they ask him to stand up, he says nothing about being limp…he says “F-you!” I think he deserved a nice shock just for that.
You’re proceeding from the position that authority is absolutely right and disobedience is absolutely wrong. This is I guess the brickwall we’ll always hit in a discussion like this. I will never, ever, ever say that someone should be tasered for telling an authority figure to “F-you”. The response is flat-out disproportionate. I can only hope you were being sarcastic.
I guess I’ll just leave the thread with a reminder that civil disobedience is a powerful and proud part of American history. I wouldn’t be so quick to taser, beat, or silence people that authority disagrees with. I’m not trying to foist the same level of meaning on this situation, but a society like you’re describing, one in which someone “gets a shock” for saying “F-you” is a society where Rosa Parks is still sitting at the back of the bus.
Jimmy, should they have just dropped what they were doing in order to tell the inquirers their names and badge numbers? Let’s change the situation just a little bit. You are being beat upon by someone else. The police are trying to get the other person to stop beating on you. Yet another person demands that the policeman immediately give up his name and badge number. Now, do you want the policeman to stop stopping the other guy from beating you up while he pulls out his ID? Didn’t think so. There is an appropriate time to ask for that information and that is after the “action”.
Kimsch,
I had planned on leaving this alone, but you’ve massively distorted what we’re talking about. One, if there was physical violence involved this wouldn’t even be an issue. That’s a gargantuan change in circumstances. Changing this to stopping a physical, violent assault on an innocent bystander from passive, verbal resistance to an officer is not a “just a little bit” kind of change. This “little” change so overwhelmingly alters the circumstances of discussion that it can’t even be taken seriously.
As for the badge numbers, there are two answers. 1) They could have “dropped what they were doing” in this situation just fine. Tabatabainejad wasn’t a physical threat to anyone, certainly not before the situation got out of control, and even after was he was still only being passively resistant. 2) I didn’t say they should. There’s a huge difference between saying “now isn’t the time”, or something similar and “get back or I’ll taser you too”.
Even more important than answering that rather contrived question is that it’s obvious anyway that asking for the badge numbers in the middle of the encounter as the crowd is in this case is an attempt to get the officers to back off. It’s a threat of legal recourse. Please tell me I don’t have to explain that here. You don’t run up to a cop and ask for a badge number in a situation like this to get their badge numbers right then and there, you do it to say not too subtly “we know/think what you’re doing is wrong and we’re going to call you on it, so cut it out before you get yourself in even more trouble.”
“That’s always the case if authority or force is used inappropriately. Overblown example being: that whole KKK group and their violence wouldn’t have existed if the blacks had just stayed slaves. I can’t think of a more benign example, but the analog is accurate if not the intensity.”
No the analog is not accurate. Slavery was forced on the black people, basically stripped their free will from them.
No one forced the man to go to UCLA. When he entered the college he agreed to follow all the guidelines and rules of the campus.
As for the officer’s threat to taser the other student was an attemt to verbally control the crowd. When a crowd is getting agitated all it takes is one person to shout “Get them!” (mob mentality) for every thing to go bad. At that point the officers are facing 2 or 3 to 1 odds at a distance where a gun is useless (and believe it or not, the police don’t want to shoot anyone), and where anything not in hand can not be drawn in time.
This is not a case of civil rights being trampled on, this is a case of some extremest inciting a situation to push an agenda.
“Using taser to inflict pain on someone as a means to make that person to comply is an act of torture. When you look at the video, the police officers were repeatedly demanding the student to stand up, and taser’ed him for not complying. Even POWs or enemy combatants are protected by Geneva Conventions against torture. We are talking about a student in UCLA campus.”
No, it wasn’t a particularly good analogy, but his point is valid. Using your logic, Rosa Parks would have deserved a beating if she hadn’t willingly walked off the bus after being placed under arrest.
Bottom line: This was an act of civil disobedience, even if it was contrived and ill-conceived. I have heard absolutely nothing that justifies the use of violent force.
The “assault against the bystanders” charge may be a bit of a stretch, but unless we’re totally missing something, the officers completely mishandled the situation.
Truthlessness, Bwahahahha! An act of torture to taser someone who is refusing to obey the law? I guess the cops should have just asked him pretty please with sugar on top. If you please leave we will buy you dinner?
Jeff, you must have skipped drinking tonight. You’re Rosa Parks example is a much better analogy for what Jimmy was trying to say. I don’t agree that the cops mishandled this, but as I stated I am in the minority even among those that usually think like I do. The “assault against bystanders” is definitely a stretch.
Ok, Jay. Now, I’m confused. You don’t dispute the analogy, but you think cops acted appropriately? Please help me reconcile the two so I don’t have to draw any conclusions about what you think should have happened to Ms. Parks.
OK Jeff. I am saying that your analogy was better. Of course the two situations were not identical. In the case of Rosa Parks, the existing laws were racially unfair. She made a stand against the unjust. I don’t think this was the case with the stupid kid at UCLA. I think he intentionally provoked and created a scene. The law was intended for the safety of the University kids. It was a routine ID check. If he was a student there by choice he agreed to obey their rules. He didn’t have an ID. They asked him to leave. He refused. They asked again and told him if he didn’t they would call the cops. He refused. They tried to escort him out. He screamed for them not to touch him. They tasered his butt. He screamed about the Patriot Act, etc. A mob of students started surrounding the scene. The kid refused to stand up when told to. He was intentionally trying to cause trouble. Over showing a stupid ID.
If you don’t like the law, there is a proper way to work in changing it. This is stupid and immature. He sounded like my 6 year old screaming that it isn’t fair!
I just think anyone jumping to the conclusion of blaming the cops are taking the easy way out. I think from the grainy video that a judgement like that isn’t really full. I think we should hear both sides of this. There is probably blame in judgement on both sides. The bottom line is that this kid is being made into some kind of hero/victim when he is a punk.
I’m hopping to the bottom for a moment. I agree with the above. No conclusions can be drawn in regards to these individuals until the full investigation is complete. We can, however, use this incident as the basis for meaningful debate by filling in the unknowns with various hypotheticals. I can’t speak for anyone else, but that’s what I’m attempting to do. No more, no less.
You’re right. It’s not that black and white. Hindsight will probably prove that he’s a victimized punk.
History agrees with you, but one doesn’t have the benefit of hindsight when deciding whether or not to protest. The officers certainly don’t have that benefit either. This gentleman, rightly or wrongly, believed he was being racially discriminated against.
Personally, I’m inclined to agree, but I don’t believe it to be relevant. From the, admittedly limited, information that we have so far, it seems like it was a peaceful protest. Peaceful protests are protected, even if they are misguided.
The phrase I heard was “long standing policy”. I’m not sure how often, or in what manner, this policy is exercised. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that the policy, while officially legitimate, is exercised in a manner which gives officers ample opportunity to express racial biases. I’m not asserting that, of course, but it seems that Mr. Tabatabainejad has.
Ms. Parks was on the bus voluntarily. She was aware of all relevant laws and policies. She was presented with the same demands and had the same response.
This is where the two situations diverge.
- Ms. Parks vacated the bus under her own power after being placed under arrest.
- Mr. Tabatabainejad vocally protested while (apparently) going physically limp.
Before I continue on, do we agree with the analogy to this point?
Couple of quick things:
We have to remember that the beginning of the video was not the beginning of the event. Unfortunately we’re left with he-said she-said for the initial spark.
1) This wasn’t just a standard ID check. It was a ‘random’ ID check in which they went straight to the guy with dark skin. He asked that if his ID was checked then everyone else should be checked too. They refused. At least two interviews show this. One on Countdown and another on Democracy Now. Yes. Both lean left. That doesn’t provide any reason for ignoring the statements.
2) He had ID and is a valid, current student. He refused to show it. See point 1.
“I just think anyone jumping to the conclusion of blaming the cops are taking the easy way out. I think from the grainy video that a judgement like that isn’t really full. I think we should hear both sides of this.”
Always both sides should be heard. Simply, however, violent physical force was used in response to non-violent, passive resistance. It seems to have conformed to the school security guidelines, but that doesn’t make it legal. Many police agencies expressly exclude passive resistance as a valid target for pain inducing countermeasures for a reason.
Jeez! The guy wouldn’t stand up! How would you suggest the cops remove the screaming crybaby from making a drama scene in a library without some kind of physical force?
Did he go limp? I think that may be the real question. From what I’ve been reading, the taser was not used in its full power mode. Even if it was, from what I understand it does not temporarily paralyze anyone. Even if it were to do that, there were long gaps of time between each shock. Plenty of time for the political protester to have a temper tantrum.
If it turns out that he was temporarily, physically disabled from the shock, then I will concede I was wrong. I don’t think that is the case.
Many sources clearly point out that he was already handcuffed when he was tasered. Even if force was appropriate, they already had handcuffs on him. They could have dragged him out, which they eventually did. The taser was never necessary. At no point was it necessary at all.
The rest doesn’t matter, ultimately.
I believe he claims to have been tasered 5 times, 3 of which were on camera to some degree. It appeared to me that he was handcuffed during at least two of them.
I didn’t mean to imply that it was involuntary. I just meant that he didn’t appear to be exerting any effort.
Force was clearly required, but nonviolent force would have been sufficient. It did not appear that he was resisting (no thrashing, kicking, etc), so all they had to do was drag him. That’s a pretty typical scenario during protests.
but as I stated I am in the minority even among those that usually think like I do.
Well, so far I agree with you.
The situation is really not as debatable as everyone has made it. If you omit the rights and responsibilities of the University, what the law states, the rights, duty and obligation of LEOs and the rights and responsibilities of the student, you have a debate. As it is… it turned out like it should have.
Its not unusual for LEOs to be accused of being “judge, jury and executioner”.
In this case they apparently are expected to be cops, psychologists, and attorneys.
Just remember… “if you have the law on your side…”
Lobo, Am I to understand that you support the use of violent force against a non-violent suspect?
Lobo, Am I to understand that you support the use of violent force against a non-violent suspect?
I support whatever force is necessary to control the situation and effect compliance with University policy and rules, or the arrest of anyone who refuses or resists.
If the kid had a bone to pick, he can do it like everyone else…through the University’s grievance system or our court system.
If the LEOs are wrong, they’ll be subject to the same court system.
I don’t believe that’s a constitutional policy. I don’t believe an LEO has authority to use violent force to “effect compliance with” any policy or law.
I would revise it to “I support whatever force is necessary to control the situation or secure the arrest of anyone who resists.”
I would further define “to control the situation” as “to secure the safety of the officers, bystanders, and subject.”
Bottom line: violent force should only be used LEOs in response to violent force, or the credible threat of violent force.
It looks like he’s well on his way to doing so.
No doubt. This is all just an academic exercise. The system is handling it, so we’re just throwing ideas around while we wait for the actual results.
so we’re just throwing ideas around while we wait for the actual results.
Thats what it boils down to, yes.