UCLA tasing was an abuse of power

Shirien Elmasraya
Daily Reveille
Nov. 20, 2006

Tuesday's incident at the University of California, Los Angeles involving a student getting repeatedly tasered by police was completely unacceptable.

UCLA student Mustafa Tabatabainejad was in the campus library after 11 p.m. It is procedure for the school's campus police to randomly check IDs at night. Tabatabainejad had failed to produce his ID when police officers first asked him to leave.

Students who witnessed the incident said Tabatabainejad was gathering his belongings to leave when the police officers grabbed him by the arm. Tabatabainejad told them to get off him, and then the police tasered him. Tabatabainejad, a student of Iranian decent, could be heard screaming and afterward yelling, "Here's your Patriot Act; here's your-abuse of power!"

Since when do you taser someone for failing to produce an ID? I find that to be not only disturbing but an egregious abuse of power. A student caught the incident on his camera phone. The video can be seen on YouTube.com, and it was one of the most horrific things I've seen.

What's even worse is that he was tasered at least three more times during the video. At one point he was on the floor, and the police officers continuously asked him to get up, and when he couldn't, they tasered him again.

Reports from the Lancet Medical Journal say that shocks from a Taser for three to five seconds can leave a person immobilized for five to 15 minutes.

Many of the students rushed to see what was going on and repeatedly asked the police officers to stop. The officers then threatened to use the Taser on anyone who got too close.

Laila Gordy, an economics student who witnessed the incident, said the police officers threatened to taser her, and that is when she asked them for their name and badge number.

"It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life," said David Remesnitsky, 2006 UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident.

It gives a whole new meaning to the name "Peace Officers."

Amnesty International reported that 61 people died from the use of Tasers in 2005, and in the past five years more than 200 have died.

On Friday afternoon more than 400 students, staff, faculty and parents protested on UCLA's campus, and according to the Daily Bruin, more than 50 student organizations sponsored the rally.

It's obvious the police officers were in the wrong by everyone who witnessed it. Perhaps because there has been so much media coverage, justice will be served. Otherwise, I doubt the police officers would be under this type of scrutiny.

Why is it some people think they are above the law and, because they are in uniforms, they have the free license to do what they wish?

That is something that always boiled my blood about the military. They can rape girls, kill innocent people, abuse the prisoners at Abu Ghraib and only serve a couple of years in prison for their crime. How is that considered justice?

What if someone goes into the military or the police force with the intention to abuse their powers? Why should they be given any special treatment?

What's sad is when these events only become statistics. Think of the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who were killed in Iraq so far. We are so heartless that we look at these numbers as mere statistics. We don't think that of the more than 600,000 people who have died, most of them lived a full life and had memories. Some of them were children, and they were not given the chance to have memories. What of their family? That's millions of lives affected. Why? Because the United States made a "mistake" going into the war. Mistakes are minor, and this is no minor issue.

What if the student would have died after being tasered? He would have just been added to the statistic if it wasn't caught on camera. It's sad that our hearts have become so hard, and we don't seem to really care anymore.

The fact that we are immune to news of hundreds of people dying every day for no legitimate reason is very distressing to say the least.

This is the time to realize that something is really wrong with our sense of compassion and justice. What can we even do at this point to change that? Perhaps the first step is to contemplate the lives that have been lost. At least it's a start.