Abuse of power, indeed.

[batskeets]

This is MESSED UP: Read the article, and watch the video.

Tasering that student for what he did (which was basically nothing) was a completely unneccessary use of force. The students who witnessed it knew that, or they wouldn't have been asking the officers to stop, or requesting their badge numbers.

And *threatening* a bystander with the taser for requesting badge numbers? Just plain ridiculous.

Comments

[alleycatsphinx.livejournal.com]

It's a good thing I wasn't there. Physically assaulting officers looks bad on your record...

[paris-of-priam.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more! I was shocked by that. Canada is also (theoretically) a country where police power is supposed to be limited by the constitution, and whenever I see something like that happening, and essentially nothing is done about it, I find it really disturbing!

The thing I found most disturbing about that (among many things) was that they kept threatening to taser him if he didn't GET UP! I mean, WTF? If he keeps on not getting up, what are you going to do? Just give him jolts of electricity until he's DEAD, and then zap him some more for not getting up?

It's bad enough that the police in Canada have a reputation for using PEPPER SPRAY like it's a toy, but tasers are serious business. One of these days somebody will have a heart attack and die from tasering, and then it will be too late to make a sensible policy about it. Granted, I'm sure the first couple of people to die will have been doing something wrong at the time, and they'll hand-wave, and fuzzify, and claim that it was their own fault, and wouldn't be dead if they hadn't been resisting arrest, or whatever. But eventually, somebody will die from tazering who did absolutely nothing wrong. It's going to get ugly before it gets better, I fear.

Yeah, and it gets worse when you find out that this is the second incident

[kitsileya.livejournal.com]

of police brutality by the UC university police in less than a month. During a demonstration at UC Santa Cruz on Oct. 18, the University police used batons and pepper spray against students indiscriminately and without warning, 3 people were arrested, and the most charges where brought against an African American female student, who was charged not only with disturbing a public meeting and resisting arrest, but also three additional felony accounts of battering a police officer. An article on the incident can be found here.

The UCSA has made a resolution that lists the grievances, and demands that legal charges and academic punishments against these students be dropped, that the police officers involved in the two incidents be suspended, and third party investigations approved by the student governments of the two campuses.

[dakania.livejournal.com]

I've been hearing about this, and I'm ashamed at my alma mater. :(