Last month I wrote up an article about a student being tazered by police for simply asking a question. I present you another video showing the exact same kind of abuse of power that we’re seeing today. In this case, we have a student that was using the campus library late at night and had forgotten his student ID card.
This actually happened back in 2006, I believe…but I must’ve missed it. Not watching TV or reading magazines or newpapers & always having to work for your info does have it’s drawbacks. I have to warn you…the video’s a little graphic. Not bloody graphic – just the graphic display of cops, hard at work, abusing their power of authority.
[flv]https://old.jeffwhiteside.com/video/UCLA_PoliceTaserStudent.flv[/flv]
Instead of police just cuffing & bagging to diffuse a situation, which you can’t tell me two or nine cops couldn’t do, we’re seeing rampant abuse of power all over the place. Things like this are extreme cases, but on a much larger scale with much smaller impacts, police are advancing upon us like a professional military. Instead of justice being the goal, we have public displays of outright torture by police for things that aren’t even a crime. Learn to fear, America. That’s what they’re trying to ingrain into your minds.
What angers me about this is the police officer’s unwillingness to identify themselves. They are required, by law, to identify themselves, both as a police officer and a name or badge number when asked. That, and the fact that *while* tazering the guy, they were demanding he stand. I dunno if you’ve ever been tazered, but as someone that’s touched a 110V circuit inadvertently (errr, more than once), I believe the voltage those things put would be more the enough to make it difficult to stand. Police should never give an order while making it completely impossible to follow. That is abuse of power.
It’s almost like basic civil rights are not being taught in police academies these days. Their training is designed to override human decency and patience. The Constitution and ethical behavior is most certainly not being taught. A tazer, which is known to kill people (by the way), is capable of completely disabling a person…and in fact, is what it was designed for. We allow police to have these because A) we believe every problem isn’t best solved with a gun and B) there are situations where disabling a person (e.g. meth-head gone freakin’ bezerk) might be necessary. A person that is willing to leave on their own accord, after realizing the seriousness of the situation, and committed the “crime” of forgetting a piece of identification, does not classify a justifiable use of such non-lethal force, in my opinion.
All this over a forgotten ID, by a student, in a library. (Imagine that…I thought that was a *good* thing?) Sure, he resisted leaving (probably because he wanted to study) and it was escalated into a violent crescendo of tazering, physical roughhousing and impossible demands. Despite even being willing to leave on his own accord…why must police take things to this level? Of course this all erupted from one of those ingenious plans to protect you…a policy of random ID checks after a certain hour in the library…and a hard line stance against any violations. Nothing bad could ever come from such a thing…or could it?
Of course, if you watch COPS every night…you’re nearly immune to seeing abuse of power. Cops that do this kind of thing rightfully earn the disrespectful term of “pig” and honestly, I hope these cops have a special place reserved in hell. That’s all I have to say.
