How are you going to have an orderly discussion with jerks like this guy around if you don’t respect the proceedings. We live in a country where we actually get to address those in power, but its useless if we just turn into a mob of screaming ranting ignoramuses.

Student protesters like this guy really are not only ineffective, they give all student activists a bad name. I’m glad they tasered him, but I’m sure it just adds to his bona fides when he goes back to the circle jerk that is far left activism.

Your poor grammar aside, the arrest was perfectly legal and constitutional. At the point he forcibly cut in line against verbal police instruction, he was creating a disturbance (disturbing the peace) which is a misdemeanor. At the point he was told to leave the podium and did not, he was both creating a disturbance and trespassing, which are misdemeanors. (Yes, you CAN trespass on university property, even at a “public” event. Ask any drunk who’s been ejected from a ball game.) At the point he resisted being walked out of the auditorium he was failing to comply with the lawful order of a peace officer, which is a misdemeanor.

And at that point he began resisting arrest and assaulting peace officers. The first of which can be a felony in that jurisdiction, and the second of which is a felony almost anywhere.

A smart person would be pleading down about now.

All kidding aside, the police acted appropriately. He got the attention that he wanted. End of story.

If the presentation and Q&A were indeed over, who cares if this guy wants to stand there and shout his questions to the air. He obviously had some point to make, funny that he was waving around his copy of Greg Palast’s book Armed Madhouse. But the necessity of dragging him off within minutes, cuffing him, tasering him, it is all very, very overboard and evidence of police intolerance and powertripping. If this was a unique incident of this kind of behavior it might have gone away, but it is not unique, it is in fact becoming commonplace.

I recently read an article about how police view their Tasers. They are a blessing and a curse to officers and have cut down significantly on the use of lethal force when faced with dangerous suspects. But too often they are being used to force compliance or to punish suspects who pose no immediate threat to the cops. From what I saw, this guy was simply being uncooperative and a jerk, resisting a unconstitutional arrest, not posing a danger to the officers or the crowd.

When acting like a jerk becomes against the law, it will be sad day for us all.

The response I saw was graduated and professional, and aimed at reducing the risk of injury to all of those present AND the person being arrested. The alternative to tasing him by the time he was down and still flailing around was pepper spray, billyclub, sheer force, or taser. Tight quarters and circumstance eliminated the first, and guess which of the remaining three was lowest-risk for injury to the person being arrested?

Yep–directed shock. No spinal injuries or cracked ribs or dislocated elbows or shoulders, no skull fractures, walked out in custody with no injuries.

Bones – You have that right but think for a minute. Why would I go off the deep end with obviously unbalanced commentary if these were not deeply personal experiences? If you think a cop has NEVER used the term spic or ni….r, , or used the F word then I think you are living in a dream world.

He intentionally disrupted the event and violated its rules (“freedom of speech” is thereby exposed as a lie) and behaved in a threatening, bizarre manner. As another writer correctly said, he’s lucky it wasn’t many years ago and he would have faced a good clubbing instead of being “Tazered.” He’s a stupid, self-absorbed, childish loser (like so many bloggers we see; no wonder they’re rushing largely to defend the punk and disparage authority).

Bones – You can correctly attribute hatred to me, but not ignorance. Here are just a few personal accounts I have had with cops.
1 – One evening on the Mass Pike, police had set up a random sobriety checkpoint. I waas pulled over and asked when I had my last drink. I told the cop more than 10 years ago. He asked me to get out of the car for a roadside sobriety check. I got out of the car WITH MY CRUTCHES to walk the line. The cop screamed at me to put the crutches down and when I tried to explain I could not walk without them, he kicked them away. I fell flat on my nose. After blowing a 0.0 on the meter he told me to get out of there. When I started towards the car, he gave me a shove and I fell again. Thanks a bunch.

2 – The Thanksgiving of my son’s freshman year in college he brought his Jewish Morrocan room mate home for the holiday. While we were cooking the dinner the two of them went to the side yard to throw a frisbee around. The frisbee went into the street and my son’s room mate went to retrieve it. A neighbor saw him and called the police about a strange person in the street who returned to our yard. Soon sirens were blaring and two police cars roared up the driveway. Okay so far – no harm no foul. When we explained to the cops that the two were my son and his room mate. They asked the boys to produce ID’s. These boys were the proverbial nerds, neither had ever gotten a drivers license and their MIT student cards were left in their dorm room.

My wife brought out her scrapbooks to prove to the police that our son was real but to no avail. After the cops called the room mate a G-D arab and a F…ing foreigner, the boys were taken to the police station for refusing to show an ID that they did not have. A frantic all to our personal attorney who called the chief of police who told us to quietly let the situation die and we returned home to our burned turkey dinner.

3 – One day I came across an old man standing beside his car on one of the township roads. The car was half on and half off the road. I stopped to see what was the matter. The drive shaft had broken and the car would not move. I saw a police car and thought great, the old man would get help. All the policeman did was get out of his car and start screaming at us to move the f…ing car. The guy had to be 75 and I was on crutches and no way we could move it. All the cop did is stand and scream, finally he took his car and pushed the old man’s car sideways into the ditch, damaging the side panels and then drove off. He never called a tow truck and I ended up driving the man into town to find a tow truck ourselves.

4 – One of the things our town encourages is setting up neighborhood watch groups. Our neighbors thought that was a good idea and the town said they would send over a policeman to meet with us to explain how it should work and to deliver a sign we could put up on our street. All the neighbors met at our house and the policeman started to explain that whenever we saw a “spic” or a “nig…r” driving thru our neighborhood we should call the cops immediately even if they were not doing anything. I told the cop to take his prejudices and deragatory comments back to the station – he was not welcome in our home or neighborhood.

I should shut up before these rememberences give me an ulcer.

I think he still should have been allowed to finish, within reason, but he seemed to have the full intention of going on for quite a while. Maybe the taser was a bit much, though they seemed to try many other less aggresive methods before resorting to the taser. A well trained officer could have put him in a wrist-lock. Mind you, a wrist lock hurts like the blazes, he’d have screamed anyway, but it wouldn’t have looked as bad and the officer could have gotten the cuffs on more easily.

Again they may have overdone it some, but crying police brutality is overboard IMO. Crying fascist is laughable, fascist police wouldn’t have used tasers, they would have used nightsticks, and kept on using them at the station.

griftdrift:
Have you even watched the videos? They only use the taser after its apparent they aren’t able to cuff him. Torture? Facists? There are some people pretty cavalierly tossing around some pretty inflammatory terms.

uh, yeah. i watched them. which is why i said “the footage i saw, which was from the girl and the camera you see right in the beginning of this one, clearly shows …”

do you even read what people say before you try to disagree with them?

and what is your point about the severity of the language? is it suddenly never apt to use them, because they’re so serious?

Lets go back to the Menendes shooting by British police. They subdued the suspect – then put 8 bullets into the back of his head. No charges were ever brought. How do you justify that? What kind of human being just executes an unarmed defenseless man? How do you stand before G-d and justify your actions. How can you even live with yourself?

Yes, humans make mistakes but most humans have to pay for their mistakes when caught. Yet when you look at the military and cops, most of the time they NEVER have to pay for their mistakes. It’s the fog of war or fear of the criminal that excuses their behavior. I just pray that G-d will make these people atone for their behavior.

No jdledell not perfect, but definitely human beings.