I stand corrected RE: CSOs and use of force. From the UCPD site [PDF] http://www.ucpd.ucla.edu/ucpd/zippdf/2006/Taser%2011-15-06.pdf
The officers using force were not CSOs (the newspaper I read this morning was worded ambiguously).
Oh, I do love the pansy-ass rationalisation of ‘I’d have ethics if only the world weren’t so horrible!’. It takes way more guts and maturity to stick to some kind of code of ethics in spite of the fact that it’s a shitty world.
I have had two nasty confrontation with policemen in my life. In both cases they attacked me without warning.
Someday I will be on a jury.
Someday…if you don’t get bumped off by the prosecution during the voir dire.
So the civil rights protestors during the 1960s who organized “sit ins” of segregated facilities deserved to be tased, right? Be carefull where you’re going with this line of reasoning.
At worst, all this guy did was trespass. The cops fucking ASSAULTED this guy. Tell me which is worse on the morality scale, trespassing or assault?
You are aware by now, aren’t you, that there are two different groups of officers: the Community Service Officers (which some or many of us call Security Guards) and the University of California Police Deparment. The latter most certainly are on a par with the LAPD as they are sworn police officers in the State of California.
You are aware by now, aren’t you, post #161?
Get with the program there, Monty.
All very nice but irrelevant. The person’s behavior was what it was: non-compliant and annoying. But they escalated the situation into one of violence. Worse, the escalation was ultimately completely pointless, accomplishing nothing more than, I assume, giving the officers a feeling of satisfaction.
The reality is the conduct of officers in many situations very much like this is to escalate situations completely out of proportion. This is particularly the case, in my experience, with mentally ill patients. Officers either deliberately or accidentally turn fairly placid situations into violent ones by almost immediately exercising aggression where there is no actual previous threat beyond words. Sometimes this is because they don’t have training. Other times, it’s because officers’ kneejerk inclination is to escalate demands and violence based on the most minor justifications.
And again: threatening to tase someone who is asking for your badge number is totally not kosher.
Of. OF! Fuckin’ Gaudere.
The Sausage Creature: Yep. Thanks. Long day, etc.
Understood. It’s been had by many.
I can’t keep up with this thread at the moment, but I didn’t want to let this go without comment:
Thank you. 
Somebody, three pages back and again last page, keeps making the interesting but utterly irrelevant point that “the officers can’t be expected to carry him out, because there are police officers who are 105lb women!”
Well spotted. Now watch the video. The three officers present are quite clearly not 105lb women and are clearly quite capable of picking up Mr. Sparky and tossing him across the threshold if they so choose. In fact, they do just that, right at the end.
Also, I have been tased. In the interest of full disclosure, my roommate is a Sheriff’s Deputy here in the great state of Florida. He did it because I was curious (and he’d secretly wanted to for weeks). It hurts like a bitch. I stayed on my feet when he did it. Then I fell down. While I was probably capable of standing again, it wasn’t something I wanted to try. I went outside for a cigarette after five minutes, and I was still a bit shaky.
So, to recap:
-he’s a student
-he’s in the library using a computer that requires him to use his ID number
-he is asked to leave
-after some sort of disagreement he is proceeding toward the exit
-he is stopped by police officers
At this point, somebody suggests that the officers had to detain him because otherwise “he might come back and off the clerk who refused to take his ID”. That person was a fucking idiot. Do police officers routinely detain every angry person they see? No, didn’t think so.
-the police officers who stopped him order him to leave
-the suspect becomes understandably confused. They just told him to stop. Now they say go. Is this a trick?
-officers warn suspect that he will be tased
-suspect, perhaps stunned that he is going to be tased for his inability to produce a student ID, gets kinda belligerent
IMHO, the first tasering can be justified. I wouldn’t have done it, but it was at worst a little hasty. The subsequent taserings smack of “officers getting frustrated, release tension by pulling on trigger”. While perhaps an understandable attitude, it’s one I generally hope not to see in armed response personnel…
I also forgot to mention: don’t flame Bear. Some people think he’s a pretty nice guy. I am one of those people.
Also, my previous post doesn’t really convey my feeling about this incident well. It would be better summed up by saying: the first use of the taser was possibly justified. Pretty much impossible to tell from the video. All use of the taser after that (particularly while the subject was cuffed) is pretty hard to justify. Personally, I would have given the guy a couple of minutes to think it over. On the other hand, I would have been out the fucking door as soon as I could stand after the first shot.
I’ll watch the video in a minute, but first I’ll say this much: cops need weapons to protect themselves. Cops are also people. Once in a while, they get pissed off and lose control when people aren’t doing what they want them to do, and they go overboard either out of frustration or revenge. Unlike most of us, though, cops who go a little too far have weapons at their disposal, meaning shit that normally has no consequences can get really ugly. Sometimes they get provoked, but that doesn’t excuse the overreactions. The police are supposed to do better.
Long thread already, and I don’t have too much to add, but I do want to commend Lissa and especially Bear_Nenno on what strike me as very fair, informed, and well-argued posts. Well done, both of you.
I must say so far I’m not disappointed, I expected both this thread, the number of responses, and the nature of the responses.
Before I even elaborate as to my feelings on this particular case, I have to genuinely wonder about a few things:
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What evidence does anyone have that the officers were just TASERing him to get a “sick thrill?” I’m almost certain you have none. Seriously, some law enforcement officers (LEOs) are pieces of shit who violently abuse their authority. But to extrapolate that said fact to all LEOs is inappropriate, short sighted, and incredibly ignorant.
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Does any one here know the department in question’s use of force guidelines and their policies for use of a TASER? (If the device was in fact a TASER and not a similar device.)
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I’m not sure why there is this knee jerk, angry, and hateful reaction towards the idea of using “pain compliance.” I think many of us are not aware of our rights, the limitations on our rights, and the power of government. LEOs have a general ability to make you comply with lawful orders. I’m not making any comparisons to the event at hand, remember, I’m not even talking about said event until a bit later. But imagine a situation where someone sits down right inside the door of a hotel lobby. This is private property, the person is somewhat of a disruption to incoming guests and staff, and has no right to be there.
The hotel manager comes to the man and asks him to leave, informing him he is being a disruption and he is not permitted to be in the hotel unless he is a member of the staff or a guest, or someone wishing to purchase a room. The man remains silent or simply refuses. The hotel manager, not being a trained security professional, alerts his security guards. In some businesses the guards would lift the guy up and probably in no uncertain terms hoist him out of the building. Let’s assume this hotel has a policy which says security personnel can’t do that. They try to effect his leaving the premises, he remains silent/refuses/etc. Eventually the police show up.
This man is trespassing that’s a crime, not a huge crime in the grand scheme of things, but I think all of us can agree that it is a crime, and one which under reasonable circumstances it makes sense to involve the police. The police arrive on the scene, two of them. They ask the man to leave and he refuses, the police then restrain him and handcuff him. They then ask him to get up and walk out of the building with them, he either refuses, or berates them and yells at them without making any move to leave. The police have a few options, they could move him out of the hotel by force, or they could attempt to gain his compliance using other measures.
Let’s further assume, since this is my hypothetical, that the hotel happens to have a long, stone staircase that leads to the street. Lissa has said there is a procedure for two persons carrying one person down a flight of stairs, but that it can become extremely dangerous if that person decides to resist whatsoever.
Personally, I’m not entirely sure I’d be comfortable taking that risk if I was a LEO. If department policy gave me the power to use a TASER or other pain compliance methods to try and effect compliance, instead of doing something which could be incredibly dangerous to both me and the suspect, I think I’d lean towards using the TASER.
I think some of us have this opinion that the police should never hurt us, whatsoever, unless we are hurting them. But I think there is a strong legal tradition that allows the police to use reasonable amounts of pain to gain compliance, especially in situations where just using force outright to make compliance a moot point may not be the wisest situation.
I think some options we should dismiss out of hand as to dealing with this situation are sitting there and trying to reason with the man for hours on end. Sure, try to get compliance verbally, but he has no right to sit there and trespass on private property for however long he can stand laying on the floor handcuffed just because he doesn’t feel like moving. He is a trespasser and has no right to be there. Believe it or not the police and LEOs do have the right to use force on you! Obviously in situations defined by law and departmental policy, but they do have that right.
In times past security batons, or even billy clubs were the primary tool (aside from the LEOs own natural abilities) at effecting compliance via pain. The security batons are intended to be used in a way that won’t cause serious lasting damage, I’ve often heard they should be used to hit extremities, to cause pain without serious lasting injury (hits to the hamstring, etc.) I’ve read before about certain specific areas a LEO can hit someone when using a security baton as a pain compliance tool (I’m sure any Doper who is a police officer or informed on the issue could clear this up.) The problem is, I can’t imagine a security baton not being a lot more dangerous than a TASER. Security batons are typically steel or aluminum, and while you are trained in their use it isn’t hard to imagine “missing your mark” with one, especially if the suspect is moving. A hit to the head or a sensitive bone area could result in serious head injury, a broken bone (wrist or ankle especially come to mind) or even death if a blow to the head is particularly strong.
Of all the options I can think of, I think using a TASER, a form of pain deliverance to try and make the person comply peacefully is the best option here. A security baton if anything seems both more dangerous and more brutal. Carrying the person (again, in this hypothetical) down the stairs with only two people seems to pose a significant risk to everyone involved.
- In general police have the authority to use reasonable force, as I’ve said before. I think we should stop saying words like assault and etc. If it was assault then it was a crime, as can be proven by a conviction in a court of law, until such a conviction happens calling it an assault is incorrect in my opinion. As of right now, it’s not even correct to call it “alleged assault” because it hasn’t been so alleged by any prosecuting authority.
–Okay, to the situation at hand.
I’m going to work off of two sources of information.
One is a YouTube video of the event, found here.
The other is a news article concerning the event found on the Daily Bruin’s website, linked here.
The above mentioned news article was my first information concerning the event. And just from reading the news article, I thought, “wow, this sounds like inappropriate use of force.” But I also know better than to jump to conclusions. Especially concerning accusations of police brutality. Especially if said accusations are being made by college students who I think tend to be anti-authoritarian in general and less than trustworthy when it comes to incidents like this.
The YouTube video, first off, didn’t really help me at all to determine the true facts of the matter. I don’t feel the video shows enough. A significant portion of the incident is completely obscured, and what I do see isn’t conclusive. So ultimately I think the YouTube video is inconclusive, but it does paint a significantly different picture than the Daily Bruin article.
The first important factual assertion that the Bruin makes is concerning the students yelling, “I said I would leave.” This is most definitely true, he does say, “I said I would leave.” Prior to that point in the video, I never actually heard him say “I would leave.” What does that mean? Nothing, it just shows that if it did happen it wasn’t picked up by the video, it certainly doesn’t prove he said I would leave, or that he didn’t say it.
Prior to him saying, “I said I would leave.” (at 1:00 on the video) I think a TASER was used on him once. He screams very loudly at one point prior to saying, “I said would leave” in a manner consistent with his reaction to the other TASERings, I did not hear the tell-tale clicking, however. At this point the person recording the incident is farther away from it, sitting down in the library, views of the student and LEOs are virtually completely obscured and there is no visual information about what is happening.
I will call this the “first TASERing.” Prior to the first TASERing:
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I never heard the student say I will leave.
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I hear the student, in an extremely belligerent and angry voice yelling “Do not touch me.” This isn’t a polite request, it’s borderline violent yelling and makes the student sound, quite simply, like a madman. This is not the rational response to being asked to leave because you don’t have proper ID, being a bit annoyed is the proper response, but screaming and making a fuss like he did does nothing in my mind to help his situation. He came off like a mad man with his screaming. This wasn’t a rational calm conversation. We don’t know what lead up to this conversation.
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Another important factual assertion made by the Daily Bruin was that the student was walking with his backpack towards the exit, and when approached by police he yelled, “Get off me,” the Daily Bruin’s wording is, “after this demand, he was TASERed.” Well–yes. But the timing implied with that wording is a bit off. He is screaming things to the effect of, “get off me,” “don’t touch me”, and etc. For the first 31 seconds of the video, what happened before that, I do not know. The police repeatedly ask him in a calm manner to get up, the communication between the police and the student is somewhat more garbled for a few seconds prior to the 0:31 mark in the video. At the 0:31 mark in the video is where what I identify as the “first TASERing” occurs.
At this point, I feel there is absolutely nowhere near enough evidence to say if it was justified. We do not know what the student was doing, we don’t know what the officers specifically said immediately prior. We can assume he wasn’t walking out, as the Daily Bruin said, because they repeatedly told him to “get up.” You can’t get up if you were walking. According to the time line of events, I think he wasn’t on the ground because he had been “TASERed” the time line I’m reading suggests the incident mostly begins with him screaming “get off me” and that the first TASERing comes after that (meaning the first actual TASERing is probably the same one I identify as the first TASERing on the YouTube video.) It may not be the case, though, we can’t presume to know what happened immediately before the recording began.
From 0:31 when he is first TASERed until 1:00 or so when he screams, “I said I would leave” repeatedly, you never hear him say he would leave. You hear him screaming and the police asking him to get up. Furthermore, after he says, “I said I would leave” we have no evidence he was actually making any effort to leave.
I suppose we could presume that he couldn’t stand up. However, he had definite ability to speak and at this point he has never said he couldn’t stand up (that you can hear on the video.)
Around this time (1:09) spectators ask for their badge numbers, no audible threat to TASER is made; no response to the request that we can make out in the video is heard at all.
Around 1:12 the student begins, in the calmest manner of speech you hear from him up until this point, to give a little recap of the events. He says, “I got tazed for no reason, I was leaving this god-forsaken place, you stopped me, you’re abusing your power. Here’s you justice at work…”
Then the police officer says, “Stand up, stand up.” The student responds, “fuck off.”
Just on my personal opinion it seems like the student wanted to leave and the police wouldn’t let him, is what started the whole thing. I think the student was under the mistaken belief that he had a right to leave on his own. He had no such right. He was trespassing and because he didn’t just behave when the CSOs asked him to leave the police now had the authority to escort him out and detain him for what he had done. Either way, he had no justification to refuse to comply with their lawful orders.
The “fuck off” to me shows not only is he more than capable of communicating to the police (including whether or not he could stand) but that he is still a belligerent individual. We still at this point in the video see very little of the suspect, and have no real idea what manner of resistance he was engaging in.
They continue to tell him to stand up, and make the warning that if he does not he will be tazed again, at 1:50 on the video he is tazed a second time.
This is the closest we’ve come so far to getting a good view of what’s happening. You can see two officers trying to lift him, with mixed success, he’s definitely not getting up. And considering the trouble they’re having in trying to lift him, I certainly can’t imagine carrying him down the stairs in such a manner as being a safe alternative.
At 2:00 he says he will leave and continues to say he will leave. But we see no evidence that he’s actually leaving or that he is complying with their requests. They continue to ask him to stand up and he continues to not stand up.
At 2:10 a second request is made for information, I can again hear no reply of any kind from the police.
At 3:10 the police have basically been asking him to stand up for an entire minute since 2:00 and they threaten to taze him again if he does not comply with their requests to stand up. They continue moving him towards the staircase, but they still don’t seem able to stand him up, and from what I see he is not being compliant at all nor does it look like it’d be that easy to move him down the stairs. If he really couldn’t stand up, why didn’t he say so? He was obviously able to speak? Just based on what I’ve seen so far, I just don’t know if he could safely be moved down the stairs, maybe again, someone with expertise in the practice of forcibly carrying someone down stairs can clear things up.
At 3:15 or so he is tazered again, and jumps to his feet and kicks his legs, then goes back down. After the tazering the crowd and the student moves down to the lower level, down the flight of stairs. Because of the camera angle we have no idea how the student is taken down the stairs, at 3:42 though he is seen kneeling on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.
Up until 4:30 the crowd moves in and you can’t see the student anymore, there is a lot of noise but little indication as to what is going on. The crowd parts somewhat near 4:30 and you can see the student, at this point prone on the ground. Around this time you can clearly hear more requests from the police that he stand up.
At 4:33 we have what I think is another TASERing, based on the student’s physical reactions, but I don’t hear the tell-tale clicking.
The student is then moved (either of his own will or drug, the video doesn’t show) closer to the door. You see another student in a white shirt talking excitedly with a police officer, and you can see the student who is being asked to stand up sitting on the ground with a police officer kneeling over him. Up until 5:30 this continues, with the police repeatedly asking him to stand up.
From this time until 6:10 you can see the police more calmly talking with the student, I think I hear him say, “I can’t stand up” at this point. The situation between the student and the police seem much more relaxed at this point, and eventually the police help him to his feet and he seems to willingly stand up. At 6:10 he is out the door, walking for a bit, but then collapsing right near the door somewhat; the police continue to move him out the door and that is the last we see of him.
Meanwhile, a student in a white shirt is getting in an angry discussion with several other police officers. The student in the white shirt then breaks off the discussion with one officer and another one tells him he needs to back away, or back up. The white-shirted student continues to remain “in his face” and the police officer tells him something to the effect of “get away or you will be tazed too.” That is the only time we hear the police make any mention of TASERing someone else, and it is not in response to a request for identification information but because the student is not backing away from the police officer as requested.
About all I can take away from the video is:
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No evidence of police directly threatening to TASER someone as response to a request for identification information.
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No evidence of the police TASERing him in spite of being told that he could not get up, in fact he is very belligerent and screaming earlier on, but you never hear him say, “I can’t get up.”
About all I can take away from it is, they repeatedly TASERed someone to try and make him stand up and walk out of the library. I have no idea if that falls within accepted use of the TASER in their department or in light of laws in that jurisdiction. If that is acceptable TASER use, then I have no problem with what I saw on the video, although the video could have failed to show many things which could be highly relevant. As I said in my earlier hypothetical situation, I can definitely imagine a situation where it would be appropriate to use a TASER to attempt to effect compliance instead of simply use physical force to force the suspect down stairs. I can also imagine situations where it is better to just carry the person out.
Considering some discrepancies from the Daily Bruin and the video, and considering the horribly quality (in terms of what you can see) of the video itself, I really don’t know how anyone can make any judgments about this situation unless you are opposed to the idea of police using pain to effect compliance in general. I don’t think we have the information necessary to determine whether or not what they did was in violation of departmental policy or the law, if it was, then I agree they should be punished. On the face of it, I don’t think their actions as I saw them are highly unreasonable, but again, all we have to go on is a news article which is somewhat conflicting and inaccurate at least compared to the video, and a video which is itself very uninformative.
So basically, I’m not really sure why anyone thinks they have the information necessary to pass any sort of judgment on this situation whatsoever.
I thought the point behind your post was that we can’t draw conclcusions, because we don’t see enough. Yet you admit drawing a conclusion on something you didn’t get to see at all. Does this invalidate your point?
Arrest him, read him his rights, drag him out of there.
Where on earth are you getting this “All people against the cop’s actions think they should have just given him a HUG!” strawman?
Actually, they definitely seem to have trouble standing him upright earlier in the video. Do I think they could have physically drug him out, yes, I think they were strong enough. But I could tell it was very awkward trying to lift him earlier in the video, and the fact that they tried to stand him up and then lowered him back down when it was obvious he wasn’t trying to stand means for whatever reason they weren’t comfortable with the idea of just slinging him over their shoulder and walking out.
If you look at the end when they pick him up, it really does look like he’s complying somewhat at first, and even taking steps. Then his legs go limp. at this point he’s down the stairs, though.
We have no direct evidence of this yet. If this is actually what was happening why was he being asked to get up at the very beginning of the video?
At no point before the first tazing can you hear him audibly confused, he’s just incredibly loud and angry. I also hear nothing on the video supporting the idea that they’re telling him to leave and them telling him to stop. It sounds very clearly throughout the period before the first tazing that they are telling him to stand up.
What video do you have? He is incredibly belligerent long before the first TASERing on the YouTube video I linked to, is there another video out there?