These Cops Are Crazy

Off Topic
81

[quote]JD430 wrote:
You dont have a fucking clue. Go talk about something else.[/quote]

Good way to start off a post. In response, I would like to say that your mother is so stupid it takes her an hour to cook minute rice. And she’s fat. So there.

I don’t care if you’re a delta force operator. Implications have been made that he was leaving before the officers arrived.

If you think that university police officers don’t have protocols for dealing with students then you’re insane. There’s no way a major university would have a staff of armed officers on campus without a set of protocols to follow.

As you know, since you’re a veteran police officer, the only reason a joint lock is considered a higher level of force in some agencies is due to liability issues. You can have arguements about the effectiveness of tasers, you can bring in ‘experts’ to talk about them, you can wash your hands of a situation if there is no direct force applied by an officer. A taser is more severe than physical submission by officers, whether it’s fully charged or not. There is possibility for permanent damage with any physical submission, but the actual act is less severe in pain and less dramatic than using a taser.

There’s a whole lot of people in here talking about how they know what it’s liked to be shocked with a taser because they’ve experienced it or they’ve seen someone else experience it. It is impossible to tell from a video like that how the taser was being used, and the only person who would be qualified to say whether it was ‘submaximal voltage’ would be the officer who was using the taser, and if this becomes a shitstorm his word won’t exactly be iron-clad because he’ll be worried about his own ass.

The taser is not a non-lethal weapon. It is a less-lethal weapon compared to a firearm. While all the tough guys in here might be doing just dandy after getting tasered, it doesn’t explain police officers suing Taser International for supposed serious injuries they received from being shocked during training.

[quote]None of you can see shit in that video.
I watched it repeatedly. We have no idea at what point the guy was handcuffed, we have no idea what he did before hand and we have no idea what caused him to get tased. If he tried to resist in anyway(kick, bite etc), even if cuffed, there is no problem zapping him or spraying him with OC. The effects of a taser wear off quickly and he would have been able to stand and walk almost immediately after, which means he was probably laying down on purpose(at the least).[/quote]

Yes, you can’t see shit in the video. What you can hear, however, is nothing from the officers prior to the student being tasered. Nothing to insinuate that he was being physically aggressive. No stop resisting, no stop fighting. You hear him saying get your fucking hands off me, and then there’s what happens. As a veteran police off you’d know how to deal with non-violent resistance, especially someone who’s grandstanding.

And the way to deal with a highly emotional person does not involve using a taser on him and ordering him to get up instead of handcuffing him and lifting him up (or just lifting him up, if he was already handcuffed as other people say), and then when he doesn’t get up and continues to act shocking him again. It was fucking stupid. Then threatening other students was a step beyond stupid.

Was he grandstanding as he left? Without a doubt. Was he taking his sweet time? Probably. Did the arrival of the campus police make the situation worse? Apparently, yes.

Have you ever had an immobilized suspect in a prone position on the ground who you needed to move? I would think so. Do you think that shocking a person who is prone on the ground, already inciting disobedience from people around him with a taser is an effective fucking strategy for handling that situation?

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[quote]Dweezil wrote:
JD430 wrote:
You dont have a fucking clue. Go talk about something else.

Good way to start off a post. In response, I would like to say that your mother is so stupid it takes her an hour to cook minute rice. And she’s fat. So there.

First off, many police agencies dont have a direct force continuum anymore(what you call a “chain of progression”). They are simply adopting a reasonable man officer standard. We dont have to progress in any linear way anymore. Guess how I know? Im a veteran police officer and a tactics instructor.

I don’t care if you’re a delta force operator. Implications have been made that he was leaving before the officers arrived.

If you think that university police officers don’t have protocols for dealing with students then you’re insane. There’s no way a major university would have a staff of armed officers on campus without a set of protocols to follow.

That means as long as your response is “reasonable”, you dont have to walk up the steps one by one. A taser is actually considered a lower level of force in some agencies than a joint lock.

As you know, since you’re a veteran police officer, the only reason a joint lock is considered a higher level of force in some agencies is due to liability issues. You can have arguements about the effectiveness of tasers, you can bring in ‘experts’ to talk about them, you can wash your hands of a situation if there is no direct force applied by an officer. A taser is more severe than physical submission by officers, whether it’s fully charged or not. There is possibility for permanent damage with any physical submission, but the actual act is less severe in pain and less dramatic than using a taser.

There’s a whole lot of people in here talking about how they know what it’s liked to be shocked with a taser because they’ve experienced it or they’ve seen someone else experience it. It is impossible to tell from a video like that how the taser was being used, and the only person who would be qualified to say whether it was ‘submaximal voltage’ would be the officer who was using the taser, and if this becomes a shitstorm his word won’t exactly be iron-clad because he’ll be worried about his own ass.

The taser is not a non-lethal weapon. It is a less-lethal weapon compared to a firearm. While all the tough guys in here might be doing just dandy after getting tasered, it doesn’t explain police officers suing Taser International for supposed serious injuries they received from being shocked during training.

None of you can see shit in that video.
I watched it repeatedly. We have no idea at what point the guy was handcuffed, we have no idea what he did before hand and we have no idea what caused him to get tased. If he tried to resist in anyway(kick, bite etc), even if cuffed, there is no problem zapping him or spraying him with OC. The effects of a taser wear off quickly and he would have been able to stand and walk almost immediately after, which means he was probably laying down on purpose(at the least).

Yes, you can’t see shit in the video. What you can hear, however, is nothing from the officers prior to the student being tasered. Nothing to insinuate that he was being physically aggressive. No stop resisting, no stop fighting. You hear him saying get your fucking hands off me, and then there’s what happens. As a veteran police off you’d know how to deal with non-violent resistance, especially someone who’s grandstanding.

And the way to deal with a highly emotional person does not involve using a taser on him and ordering him to get up instead of handcuffing him and lifting him up (or just lifting him up, if he was already handcuffed as other people say), and then when he doesn’t get up and continues to act shocking him again. It was fucking stupid. Then threatening other students was a step beyond stupid.

Was he grandstanding as he left? Without a doubt. Was he taking his sweet time? Probably. Did the arrival of the campus police make the situation worse? Apparently, yes.

If you are going to be so quick to critique, at least lets take a show of hands here on who has fought with a resisting subject. You have? Good. Have you done it with the goal in mind of injuring him as little as possible, all the while you are wearing a bunch of weapons around your waist? Not many people left I would wager. Ive been there. Who else?

Have you ever had an immobilized suspect in a prone position on the ground who you needed to move? I would think so. Do you think that shocking a person who is prone on the ground, already inciting disobedience from people around him with a taser is an effective fucking strategy for handling that situation?[/quote]

I tried to educate you but your mind is made up and you wont listen, so what can I do?

The taser has a “drive stun” mode which can be used to gain compliance - pain compliance - from a passive resisting subject. A passive resistor is someone
who is not actively fighting you(swinging away) but is doing things like not giving his hands for handcuffing or going limp and refusing to walk. The cops who carry tasers are taught this.

The officer threatening to taser the twerp demanding their badge numbers was absolutely right. Dont ever do this when cops are in the middle of dealing with a situation. Headquarters has records of who went to what call and those records are kept forever. Go to the station afterwards and file a complaint if you think wrongdoing occurred. Getting in the way heightens the danger for us and in this circumstance, increases the chance of riot if we have to wind up arresting you as well for interference.

For the record, I dont carry a taser(not permitted in my state) but I have been a strong advocate for it. The fact of the matter is too many cops are being hired who are not physically capable, so they need to be properly equipped with less-lethal weapons.

There are also plenty of situations that almost require less-lethal to reach a positive outcome. Were there other pathways they could have taken to resolve the situation? Probably. But that doesnt necessarily make the one they chose wrong.

By the way, of course campus police would have policy and procedure to follow. However, some anonymous guy sitting behind a keyboard, who has very little facts on the situation and no familiarity at all with police training, is going to make that judgement?

You also dont have a clue about joint locks. I guess you have not been in many as they can definitely be excruciatingly painful. I have(over the course of 10 years of brazillian jiujitsu training and competition.) In the long run, the taser is safer than twisting on a joint.
You can stop arguing that. Of course, you said the training and experience of the people telling you these things doesnt matter so…

I dont really care to address any more of your post. I got the idea from reading it that you believe the arrival of the police instigated this situation, merely by their presence. If we are called, we come and are then bound to carry out the maintenance of law and order. Maybe you are one of these types who are offended by the mere presence of authority. There seem to be plenty of people who are posting here who “get it”. If you are someplace you dont belong, leave. If the police tell you to leave peacefully without any type of aggression(verbal too), just leave. If you were wronged, file a complaint.

Ultimately, there is a larger social point here about the way a lot of people have been raised in this country in the last few generations, but that is another story.

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JD430 raises a great issue, were these officers following protocal/proceedure? If so, can the public continue to support these tactics?

It seems JD430 has made up his mind and is an advocate of tazers…fair enough if he’s not lying he’s paid his dues has earned more of a voice than many of us. At the same time we, as citizens of the republic, are obligated to contemplate and come to our own determinations.

IMO the cops need a longish suspension and re-training, perhaps to be fired for threatening another (law abiding) citizen. But I’ll hold my final opinion until I hear all sides of the case.

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he was an idiot

the police seem to be jackasses

no body wins!

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[quote]JD430 wrote:
I tried to educate you but your mind is made up and you wont listen, so what can I do?[/quote]

Yes, my mind is made up that shocking a handcuffed student with a taser when he’s already inciting disobedience is an almost immeasurably stupid act. If you want to settle a crowd, you don’t do it by continuing to perform the act that started the crowd gathering, especially when the person is prone, on the ground and handcuffed.

Again, we have no idea how the taser was being used.

No, he’s not.

See, here’s where I think you think we disagree: I think a taser is a good weapon. I don’t necessarily like the current iteration of it, but it’s better than a knightstick (I say this having been hit by an ASP more than once) and it’s better for the police officers in a violent confrontation than making direct contact.

This kid was a little nothing, there were 3 officers, a crowd was already gathering. The kid was being non-violent in resistance. According to almost everyone in this thread (I don’t know how they know this), after the taser was used and he dropped he was handcuffed. When a hostile crowd is gathering, and the kid is probably 150 pounds soaking wet, pick him the fuck up and go. The taser may be a fine addition to the arsenal of police tactics, but it was used poorly in this instance.

The initial use may be justified, because the situation did escalate when they arrived. If everyone saying he was leaving before they arrived is true, anyway. The second time they used it, when he was prone and handcuffed, was wrong and stupid. It was both of those things because there was already a hostile crowd gathered, and then they see someone prone and immobilized shocked again. If you’re a police officer, and you feel that you’re in a hostile situation, you have to be aware that that will only make it worse.

I’m going to make the judgement that armed officers hired by a major university to work on their campus are told to avoid physical confrontation by all means possible.

You have 10 years of BJJ experience, I have 5. Before I started in MMA I was trained by a hard-ass daito-ryu practitioner who would leave me sore for days. I comprehend the pain. I’ve had people make mistakes on me, I’ve had beginners who went too far, I’ve had injuries.

I recognize the potential for long term damage. I also recognize that it’s significantly less dramatic and extreme than being hit by a taser, especially if the person who you’re using it on is some little whiny college student.

Please, let’s save trying to take my history, detective. I have no issue with authority, at all. I have respect for authority when it deserves respect, and no respect for it when it doesn’t, just as every other rational person should. They came, they saw, they tased.

They could have, and should have gone a different way in handling this. They get no respect from me, especially when they’re unable to contain the feelings they have about the other students and they threaten them.

If you’re already leaving? If the only ‘aggression’ is one sentence, and it comes after they initiate physical contact?

There should also be a larger social point here about people who from their pool of experience in life make unfounded presumptions about people that have been raised in this country.

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[quote]Dweezil wrote:
I was trained by a hard-ass daito-ryu practitioner who would leave me sore for days.[/quote]

I just re-read my post and I now realize how gay this sounds.

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[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
JD430 raises a great issue, were these officers following protocal/proceedure? If so, can the public continue to support these tactics?

It seems JD430 has made up his mind and is an advocate of tazers…fair enough if he’s not lying he’s paid his dues has earned more of a voice than many of us. At the same time we, as citizens of the republic, are obligated to contemplate and come to our own determinations.

IMO the cops need a longish suspension and re-training, perhaps to be fired for threatening another (law abiding) citizen. But I’ll hold my final opinion until I hear all sides of the case. [/quote]

I cant keep going on and on with
Dweezil. Ive said my piece and I can tell when what Im saying is falling on deaf ears.

My ultimate goal was to shed a little light on this situation, using the filter of my own experience. Like the surgery example I gave above, the police use of force can be somewhat shocking to
see, especially if you dont know what is happening. The taser is a great example of this. Hearing the “bzzz” it makes and then hearing someone screaming can make you cringe as it smacks of the ideas we have in our heads of torture rooms in some third world countries. I cringed somewhat hearing it, even. However, you have to be aware of some things:

1.I dont know this for sure, partly because of the crappy video, but the police may have been completely in policy to resort to it. They also may have been justified to use it to gain compliance after the guy began resisting by refusing to walk.

2.From the long conversations I have had with a lot of knowledgable guys, the taser hurts but his reaction seems absurdly theatrical. I heard somebody say that the guys on jackass laugh about being hit with it while this guy screams like they are sawing his arm off. He also could have just stood up and walked out afterward. The taser does not leave you incapacitated after the charge is stopped.

The reason police get very aggravated about things like this is because we have had decades of people who dont have
any idea about the ugly reality of human violence judging us. As a police instructor, I want to throw my TV out the window when I hear some dope on the news say “couldnt they just shoot him in the leg” when some homicidal nut is shot. They dont know anything about combat stress or the tactics involved in managing aggressive behavior(much less actually having “been there”), but they are quick to tell us what we should be doing.

Im surprised no one has considered the possibility that this was a set up. This happens regularly anymore(there are even training camps given by radical groups on how to stage things like this
to harm the police) and he may have planned it out long before or decided to make a spectacle like this on the spur of the moment. It is interesting you hear him yelling about the Patriot Act and things like that.

Lastly, I dont know where this idea that he was leaving before the police showed up came from. It is not in the video or article that started this thread.

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[quote]djrobins wrote:
Why did the student need to leave the library in the first place?[/quote]

AHHHHHHH! And there it is!?! Because he was TRYING to make a STATEMENT! And he did, right? He managed to incite the whole bunch of bleeding-heart kids, didn’t he! I heard something about the Patriot Act shouted (in between his screams, of course).

So what should the cops have done? Just let him stay there?

“Will you show us your ID? No? Well. You gotta leave then. No? Well…okay. I guess you can stay.”

Here is what COULD have happened: Cops ask for ID and the kid shows it to them.

I actually enjoyed hearing that punk kid scream like a bitch. I bet getting his ass tasered wasn’t in his little plan.

I say MORE tasering. It can only help things.

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How not to get your ass kicked by the police. Funny but common sense.

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[quote]Hack Wilson wrote:
djrobins wrote:
Why did the student need to leave the library in the first place?

AHHHHHHH! And there it is!?! Because he was TRYING to make a STATEMENT! And he did, right? He managed to incite the whole bunch of bleeding-heart kids, didn’t he! I heard something about the Patriot Act shouted (in between his screams, of course).

So what should the cops have done? Just let him stay there?

“Will you show us your ID? No? Well. You gotta leave then. No? Well…okay. I guess you can stay.”

Here is what COULD have happened: Cops ask for ID and the kid shows it to them.

I actually enjoyed hearing that punk kid scream like a bitch. I bet getting his ass tasered wasn’t in his little plan.

I say MORE tasering. It can only help things.

[/quote]

What should the cops have done? Carried him out like they did at the end, instead of inflicting pain on an individual that was not harming anyone or representing a physical threat. Those cops are fucking cowards.

Furthermore, verbally threatening to taser a student who was asking for their badge numbers can be construed as an assault. Those guys can look forward to some lengthy litigation.

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http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38960

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.

A six-minute video showed Tabatabainejad audibly screaming in pain as he was stunned several times with a Taser, each time for three to five seconds. He was told repeatedly to stand up and stop fighting, and was told that if he did not do so he would “get Tased again.”

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Tabatabainejad was also stunned with the Taser when he was already handcuffed, said Carlos Zaragoza, a third-year English and history student who witnessed the incident.

“(He was) no possible danger to any of the police,” Zaragoza said. “(He was) getting shocked and Tasered as he was handcuffed.”

But Young said at the time the police likely had no way of knowing whether the individual was armed or that he was a student.

As Tabatabainejad was being dragged through the room by two officers, he repeated in a strained scream, “I’m not fighting you” and “I said I would leave.”

The officers used the “drive stun” setting in the Taser, which delivers a shock to a specific part of the body with the front of the Taser, Young said.

A Taser delivers volts of low-amperage energy to the body, causing a disruption of the body’s electrical energy pulses and locking the muscles, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“It’s an electrical shock. … It causes pain,” Young said, adding that the drive stun would not likely demobilize a person or cause residual pain after the shock was administered. Young also said a Taser is less forceful than a baton, for example.

But according to a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001, a charge of three to five seconds can result in immobilization for five to 15 minutes, which would mean that Tabatabainejad could have been physically unable to stand when the officers demanded that he do so.

“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 ??” that’s assault," he said.

Tabatabainejad was released from custody after being given a citation for obstruction/delay of a peace officer in the performance of duty.

Neither Tabatabainejad nor his family were giving interviews Wednesday.

Police officers said they determined the use of Tasers was necessary when Tabatabainejad did not do as they asked.

According to a UCPD press release, Tabatabainejad went limp and refused to exit as the officers attempted to escort him out. The release also stated Tabatabainejad “encouraged library patrons to join his resistance.” At this point, the officers "deemed it necessary to use the Taser in a “drive stun’ capacity.”

“He wasn’t cooperative; he wouldn’t identify himself. He resisted the officers,” Young said.

Neither the video footage nor eyewitness accounts of the events confirmed that Tabatabainejad encouraged resistance, and he repeatedly told the officers he was not fighting and would leave.

Tabatabainejad was walking with his backpack toward the door when he was approached by two UCPD officers, one of whom grabbed the student’s arm. In response, Tabatabainejad yelled at the officers to “get off me.” Following this demand, Tabatabainejad was stunned with a Taser.

UCPD and the UCLA administration would not comment on the specifics of the incident as it is still under investigation.

In a statement released Wednesday, Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams said investigators were reviewing the situation and the officers’ actions.

“I can assure you that these reviews will be thorough, vigorous and fair,” Abrams said.

The incident, which Zaragoza described as an example of “police brutality,” left many students disturbed.

“I realize when looking at these kind of arrest tapes that they don’t always show the full picture. … But that six minutes that we can watch just seems like it’s a ridiculous amount of force for someone being escorted because they forgot their BruinCard,” said Ali Ghandour, a fourth-year anthropology student.

“It certainly makes you wonder if something as small as forgetting your BruinCard can eventually lead to getting Tased several times in front of the library,” he added.

Edouard Tchertchian, a third-year mathematics student, said he was concerned that the student was not offered any other means of showing that he was a UCLA student.

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http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/16/ucla_cops_taser_stud.html

UCLA cops taser student who won’t show ID
UCLA cops tasered a student who refused to show ID in Powell Library. They threatened nearby students with tasering if they interfered. A student captured video of the assault with a cameraphone. I hope the campus cops go to jail over this.
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…

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.

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[quote]Dweezil wrote:
JD430 wrote:
The second time they used it, when he was prone and handcuffed, was wrong and stupid. It was both of those things because there was already a hostile crowd gathered, and then they see someone prone and immobilized shocked again. If you’re a police officer, and you feel that you’re in a hostile situation, you have to be aware that that will only make it worse.

Couldn’t see the video but this sounds right to me. Little geek wants to make a “statement” about being singled out?? Should have just showed his damn id - maybe next time. So he gets zapped.
But if he is 150lbs and there are three of you and he is cuffed???
Then shocking him again is really stupid.
Cuffed? Pick him up and go.
Shocking him is only going to ignite the crowd.
At that point I would say they fucked up.

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The student acted like and idiot and got tazered. I dont have a problem with that BUT dont be dickwads and ask him 1000 times to get up and repeatidly taser him. Pick his sorry ass up and get him the hell out of there.

95

How did I miss this thread. The student was an asshole. The cops were idiots.