Breaking: Student tasered multiple times at UCLA library

[Monty]

@tagos

I don’t give a fuck about their opinions and find the American worship of unifrms laughable.

Worship of uniforms? Cute, but irrelevant comment. As to the opinions, what do you have against informed opinions?

Any response using that amount of force against a student in their own library is ridiculous.

The student does not own the library nor is it (at least, it should not be) his home.

The correct response of the police should have been to shrug and walk away.

Or, perhaps the correct response of the police should be to apprehend the trespasser. See upthread for an informed discussion on why the individual is considered a trespasser.

In my university a little old lady or an old guy working part time as a porter would have politely asked his name and confirmed his status on the library computer and that would have been the end of it. We don’t have the ‘respect my authority’ attitude that rules is rules and have to be enforced no matter how stupid or how much trouble it’ll cause. We in fact like members of the public to feel free to use our resources.

And if the person so queried refuses to cooperate with the porter? Would that be the end of it? Somehow, I seriously doubt that.

And if he was creating a disturbance he would have been asked politely to leave. Failing that a security man would have escorted him off the premises and internal disciplinary action taken with his department. Apparently our ones have limbs that don’t break and backs that don’t throw when lifting people. And we try and not hire hemophiliacs who’ll bleed to death if they take a scratch.

Enlighten me here. How, exactly, does one determine the individual’s department if he refuses to provide identification, if he refuses to cooperate with the porter or security?

I’m not crying a friggin’ river for these ‘won’t somebody think of the uniformed thugs’ arguments. And these ones acted like thugs.

See above about informed opinions.

[Hippy_Hollow]

tagos, as someone who studies higher education and has worked as a college administrator, I can tell you IMO there are two reasons why the student shouldn’t be in the lab without ID, whether someone pipes up and says “I know that dude!” or not.

First, colleges are actually attempting to be educational. At some point when you become an adult, you have to be responsible for carrying your ID, keys, and so on. I was attempting to fly to Malaysia two summers ago and forgot my current passport. While I’m sure someone at the airline could go on a computer and confirm my identity, they did not. I missed my flight and had to fly the next day with my passport. When my staffmembers were confronted with students who habitually left their keys in their rooms, leaving their doors unlocked and doors propped because they thought it was a hassle to carry them, I told them that I would support them if they chose not to let them in for a few hours. Carrying your ID is in the same constellation. If you don’t have it, you leave and get it, and go back to work - next time, bring it with you and avoid the hassle. Otherwise get out.

Second, the minute someone gets into that lab and does anything off the level - send a racist e-mail, downloads a virus, steals an iPod… students, parents, and administrators will go batshit, saying “How did this person get inside? Don’t we have a security system in place?” Colleges can be found criminally negligent if they don’t enforce basic security procedures. That’s not to deny that some of the worse criminals may be card-carrying members of the campus community, but there is an assumption of relative safety in this environment.

The last rationale has to do with getting lost or stolen ID cards out of circulation. If a student doesn’t suffer any consequences for not having an ID, he or she might take his or her time getting a new one. If UCLA cards work like cards in my institution, they can allow access to other buildings, libraries, or even residence halls. Imagine what some joker can do if he gets hold of a working student ID.

This student is completely at fault for escalating the situation instead of responsibly asking for the staffperson for a few minutes to finish up, then saving his work, getting his ID, and going back to work. By making a scene he wasted his own time and that of his fellow community members, which wipes out that whole idea that he was working frantically on a project that was due. Seems that getting his ID and explaining the situation was the best choice. Failing that, go to a friend’s place or Kinko’s. Instead, he disrupted an entire lab of students who probably needed to get their work done as well.

This actually reminds me of a pretty cool story on election day. A US Representative, whom I can’t recall right now, went to his local polling place to vote - and left his voter registration card at home. This guy was known to everybody in the place, even came with an entourage of press. The polling officer told him he needed his card, turned him away, and he had to come back with card in hand to vote. The policy is there and is being enforced equally, regardless of who the person is.

The student claims that he was racially profiled. I tell you this, if I was a student of any race and had been turned away or denied entry from the lab at any time, and this guy was allowed to be in the lab, I’d be pissed. Now if this place has a lax enforcement policy on that level, he may have a point, but I haven’t heard evidence supporting this.

(This is all coming from a guy who occasionally forgets his ID in his car, and has to sign in the guest log even if the desk worker is one of my students! BTW, I grew up in the UK, and I was always told if I was lost to seek out a bobby in uniform. Went back to visit a few years back and was pleasantly surprised that the bobbies outside Marylebone Station were as helpful as ever… even to a Black American dude.)

[Monty]

@Hippy Hollow

tagos, as someone who studies higher education and has worked as a college administrator, I can tell you IMO there are two reasons why the student shouldn’t be in the lab without ID, whether someone pipes up and says “I know that dude!” or not.

A third one is that the university library is not there for the benefit of the general public. It is there to support the education of the students. That is why any ol’ member of the general public cannot get a library card for the libraries at my alma mater. Only students, staff, and alumni can. My university’s library did permit Joe Q. Public to use some of the computers; however, none of the computer labs was open to the general public.

[tagos]

@Monty

Enlighten me here. How, exactly, does one determine the individual’s department if he refuses to provide identification, if he refuses to cooperate with the porter or security?

You shrug and walk away if he’s doing no harm. Which is precisely what our local police did when called to deal with a student sit in at an arms meeting. As students they weren’t trespassing as far as they were concerned.

By some magical means the incident passed without anyone getting clubbed, or tazered, sprayed with mace or even handcuffed. I think something we have over here called ‘common sense’ and ‘a sense of proportion’ was successfully applied.

The same magical properties would be applied to the various OMFG scenarios concerning viruses or remotely hijacking war game computers and launching nuclear holocausts or whatever. Shit happens all the time and you clear it up.

But maybe we British are not a bunch of bloody hysterics. And anyone pulling the ‘my likkle precious has paid for this and so we don’t want freeloaders’ would be told to get a friggin life. After we’d all finished pointing and mocking of course.

It helps that our security people aren’t trigger-happy thugs and are trained to have the skills to deal with looming threats to civilisation and all that we hold dear, such as people without library cards without having to call in a B52 strike. I hear they are even trained in the arcane art of lifting people properly and so the plague of bad backs apparently sweeping the USA, like a, well, plague hasn’t happened. It’s all so baffling I’m just going to have to assume Satan and child sacrifices are involved. They can even use compliance techniques without their own arms snapping off.

If someone is being so disruptive he is a threat to others then your security people deal with it in as non-violent a way as possible. Maybe using some of the techniques the rest of the untazered world uses now and pre-tazer times had, in their abject backwardness and ignorance, to use.

[Monty]

@tagos

You shrug and walk away if he’s doing no harm. Which is precisely what our local police did when called to deal with a student sit in at an arms meeting. As students they weren’t trespassing as far as they were concerned.

And yet again you avoid the issue of how do the security and police know he’s a student. When he refused to comply with the requirements for remaining there and was ordered out lawfully, he then became a noncompliant trespasser. It doesn’t matter what the students thought about their status, their status under the law is found, not in their minds, but in the law.

By some magical means the incident passed without anyone getting clubbed, or tazered, sprayed with mace or even handcuffed. I think something we have over here called ‘common sense’ and ‘a sense of proportion’ was successfully applied.

Avoiding the issue that there’s really no such thing as common sense, let’s look at the simple fact: the student in the UCLA incident was the one who caused the escalation. In

The same magical properties would be applied to the various OMFG scenarios concerning viruses or remotely hijacking war game computers and launching nuclear holocausts or whatever. Shit happens all the time and you clear it up.

Wow. The rest of your post is just as asinine as that last paragraph.

[Monty]

Well, I happen to have a little more time, so I’ll address the rest of it.

@tagos

But maybe we British are not a bunch of bloody hysterics.

The only hysteric was the trespasser. Well, perhaps a few of the crowd there were also getting hysterical.

And anyone pulling the ‘my likkle precious has paid for this and so we don’t want freeloaders’ would be told to get a friggin life. After we’d all finished pointing and mocking of course.

Who said paid for? I pointed out the simple fact that the university library at my university was not there for the general public.

It helps that our security people aren’t trigger-happy thugs and are trained to have the skills to deal with looming threats to civilisation and all that we hold dear, such as people without library cards without having to call in a B52 strike.

There was no B-52 strike. There was the lawful performance of their duties by officers of the law. Evidently it has escaped your notice that not all violations of the law are on the scale of mass destruction. Some of those less than mass destruction scale violations are cause for arrest of the individual violating such laws. Trespass, as you might like to know, is one such violation that can result in arrest.

I hear they are even trained in the arcane art of lifting people properly and so the plague of bad backs apparently sweeping the USA, like a, well, plague hasn’t happened. It’s all so baffling I’m just going to have to assume Satan and child sacrifices are involved. They can even use compliance techniques without their own arms snapping off.

And one of the compliance techniques permitted and used by the UCLA police (who are, as mentioned upthread, actual police officers) is the tazer. Apparently, none of the police or security personnel had their arms snap off.

I will bold six words in your next paragraph.

If someone is being so disruptive he is a threat to others then your security people deal with it in as non-violent a way as possible. Maybe using some of the techniques the rest of the untazered world uses now and pre-tazer times had, in their abject backwardness and ignorance, to use.

Do you recognize those words? Apparently, the police officers on the scene (and, no, there does not appear to be sufficient video coverage of the entire event to determine in detail what really happened) did that and that the tazer was the “as non-violent way as possible” for that situation and that particular offender.

[tagos]

@Monty

And yet again you avoid the issue of how do the security and police know he’s a student. When he refused to comply with the requirements for remaining there and was ordered out lawfully, he then became a noncompliant trespasser. It doesn’t matter what the students thought about their status, their status under the law is found, not in their minds, but in the law.

Avoiding the issue that there’s really no such thing as common sense, let’s look at the simple fact: the student in the UCLA incident was the one who caused the escalation. In

Wow. The rest of your post is just as asinine as that last paragraph.

The sensible thing for all concerned, as I keep saying and which you keep ignoring, is to get over the ‘respect my authority’, ‘obey the rules’ attitude in favour of a live and let live pragmatism.

Just ignore people flouting petty rules if they are not doing any harm. No sensible institution should insist on enforcing every jot and tittle of every rule if it is not necessary. The consequences of that is writ large in this incident.

No - the student caused nothing. The attempt to hassle a guy doing no harm was the cause. The attempt to mindlessly enforce a rule using brute force was the problem. You are the living embodiment about my ‘authoritarian personality’ point.

So he refused to identify himself? Big Friggin’ Deal no matter how often you parrot ‘Rules, rules rules’.

And if you think my last paragraph ‘asinine’, I suggest that word does not mean what you think it does.

But hey - if you want to live in a world where a bunch of knuckle-draggers in uniform can taze a student for not carrying a library card, you just knock yourself out. I’ll stay here, in the civilised, non-hysterical part.

[tagos]

@Monty

I will bold six words in your next paragraph.
Do you recognize those words? Apparently, the police officers on the scene (and, no, there does not appear to be sufficient video coverage of the entire event to determine in detail what really happened) did that and that the tazer was the “as non-violent way as possible” for that situation and that particular offender.

The non-violent way is to walk away and forget about it. And a tazer is never ‘the most non-violent way’ to deal with anything. It is how cops who are shit at their job handle a situation like this.

[Telemark]

@tagos

The non-violent way is to walk away and forget about it. And a tazer is never ‘the most non-violent way’ to deal with anything. It is how cops who are shit at their job handle a situation like this.

So if there was a guy who walked into your house, sat on the couch in your living room and refused to leave but wasn’t hurting anything, you want the cops to just ignore him and hope he goes away on his own accord?

Property rights mean very little if you don’t have any ability to enforce them.

[Monty]

Sorry, tagos, but the police officers are obviously not in favor of anarchy as you apparently are.

And you are now being dishonest. I did not say the tazer is the most non-violent way. I said, as anyone with actual reading skills would understand, that evidently in this case the police officers considered the tazer to be the most non-violent method as possible for this case. There is a wide difference between the two statements.

[Zakalwe]

@tagos

Just ignore people flouting petty rules if they are not doing any harm. No sensible institution should insist on enforcing every jot and tittle of every rule if it is not necessary. The consequences of that is writ large in this incident.

And when a different student, who is obeying the rules, can’t get a computer to finish her term paper because knuckle dragger is using it? Allocation and control of limited resources to those permitted to use them is not a “petty rule”.

[kinoons]

@tagos

I hear they are even trained in the arcane art of lifting people properly and so the plague of bad backs apparently sweeping the USA, like a, well, plague hasn’t happened. It’s all so baffling I’m just going to have to assume Satan and child sacrifices are involved. They can even use compliance techniques without their own arms snapping off.

I’d love to see a cite for the claim that EMS, police, or security workers in the UK or Europe are less prone to back injuries than those in the USA. I stand by my first post that went unaddressed; it is not easy to pick up a cooperative person, damn hard to pick up a dead weight person, and nearly impossible to pick up and carry a non-cooperative person.

[Fear_Itself]

@kinoons

I stand by my first post that went unaddressed; it is not easy to pick up a cooperative person, damn hard to pick up a dead weight person, and nearly impossible to pick up and carry a non-cooperative person.

Not for two or more cops it isn’t. Each take an arm; piece 'o cake.

[St.Urho]

@Fear Itself

Not for two or more cops it isn’t. Each take an arm; piece 'o cake.

Ever tried it? We have to do it at work all the time and there’s no way that 2 people could carry out an uncooperative person "easily.’

St. Urho
Paramedic

[tagos]

@Fear Itself

Not for two or more cops it isn’t. Each take an arm; piece 'o cake.

Hush. It’s well known apparently, in The Olden Days before the invention of the taser, that all anyone had to do to be held unaccountable for their crimes was to go limp, wait for the sound of popping backs and walk briskly away.

It was anarchy, absolute anarchy I tell you. Blood flowed in the streets, you could barely hear yourself think but for the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, wild dogs prowled in packs, students went un-electrocuted in libraries. I don’t know how we made it to the 21st century, I really don’t.

And more seriously. No, if a cop is too stupid or incompetent to move a handcuffed person without damaging his back that does not give them the right to electrocute people.

Neither does their grievous lack of people skills that apparently render them incapable of pursuading a student leaving a library peaceably to continue leaving the library give them a right to electrocute said student. Even if that person is loudly refusing they don’t have that right. Having a tazer is not substitute for knowing how to peaceably defuse a situation. Particularly one as pathetically trivial as this.

But that’s my last word on the subject as I’m the only participant left in this thread who seems to have any sense of proportion. Electrocuting people for being in a library, I mean. Really. :rolleyes:

[ExTank]

@tagos

And more seriously. No, if a cop is too stupid or incompetent to move a handcuffed person without damaging his back that does not give them the right to electrocute people.

Neither does their grievous lack of people skills that apparently render them incapable of pursuading a student leaving a library peaceably to continue leaving the library give them a right to electrocute said student. Even if that person is loudly refusing they don’t have that right. Having a tazer is not substitute for knowing how to peaceably defuse a situation. Particularly one as pathetically trivial as this.

But that’s my last word on the subject as I’m the only participant left in this thread who seems to have any sense of proportion. Electrocuting people for being in a library, I mean. Really. :rolleyes:

Get over yourself, you hysterically melodramatic fool. The punk wasn’t electrocuted. If he was, then the cops might be facing murder charges and the city a wrongful death suit.

As far as your “contribution” to this thread is concerned, good fucking riddance. I haven’t seen this much melodrama since I last saw a Mexican soap-opera.

[slaphead]

I think it’s interesting that everyone keeps bringing up these deaths after tazering that the ACLU is so concerned about, but no-one ever trots out comparative numbers for deaths after a physical scuffle or being smacked with a baton - both of which seem to occur with distressing frequency.

@tagos

Hush. It’s well known apparently, in The Olden Days before the invention of the taser, that all anyone had to do to be held unaccountable for their crimes was to go limp, wait for the sound of popping backs and walk briskly away.

In The Olden Days it was also not unheard of for those lovely english bobbies to beat seven bells of shit out of people and then say that they ‘fell down the stairs’. Because when a routine arrest resulted in lots of scrapes and bruises for all concerned, who’s going to know? If being zapped with a tazer is a safer and more efficient way of getting someone to say ‘ouch, I’ll behave’ than putting them in a half-nelson or thwacking them with a baton, then fine. I’d prefer if these sorts of things could be settled with a polite discussion, but that’s not going to happen every time.

I don’t know where you study, but if I were asked to show my ID and refused, I would end up having a chat with security very quickly, probably followed by a chat with the Met some time later. Because the university spends a lot of money on its facilites, and attaches some rules to the use of those facilites to ensure that stuff does not get stolen and that its students get to reap the benefits. It’s not provided for the general benefit of any Tom, Dick or Harry who feels like wandering in off the street.

Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of this students particular grievance, when the person in charge of the facility says they are going to call security, that is the time to leave and pursue things further by letter. Once the doughbags have had their tea break interrupted to deal with a shouter, it’s pretty unlikely to end in apologies and handshakes, so call it off before it gets to that point.

Me, I like my libraries quiet. I would prefer for noisy people to be picked up by their belt loops and carried away - UberWedgie for library disturbers! However, that’s probably a lot more dangerous for all concerned than a tasering.

[Loopydude]

Just to keep score: Am I the only “liberal” here who feels no particular sympathy for this kid and suspects he was pretty much asking for it?

[Clothahump]

@brewha

I might get some shit for this, but it sounds like the guy did that to himself. If he was a student, he knew that he needed an ID to be in that computer lab. When he was asked to show it, he refused. He then refused to leave the lab.

The security may have used excessive force, but he could have prevented all of it. Instead, he refused to cooperate and tried to get other students in the lab to resist as well. I just don’t have much sympathy for him.

Agreed.

[St.Urho]

Nope, me too.