Tasered student.

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Sep 23 2007, 5:43 pm
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Zagreus wrote:
Except he was screaming in a high pitched school girl voice BEFORE he got tasered...

Yep, that's the key point Jamesburrow missed. The degree to which this guy was off balance is pretty obvious. Looking into the guy's background, and also seeing the police reports and the statements of witnesses (the ones who weren't in on the stunt with him, that is), makes it clear that he just likes to pull attention-seeking crap.

Lummox JR

Okay, i'm going to give my opinion for real now.

So what, he pulled an attention seeking stunt. He shouldn't of been arrested for it. I don't think someone would get that hysterical if they didn't care. However i'm also positive he knew to make a big scene in public to probably draw attention to his point.

It's like with Cho Seung Hui, he had a point he wanted to make. Did it get across? no. It was censored, but he sure as hell tried to draw attention to his point? Did it get out, hell yes. Did this guy's point get attention drawn to it? hell yes, however people are just more focussed on the tasering.

My 2 cents.
Sep 23 2007, 6:21 pm (Edited on Sep 23 2007, 6:27 pm)
In response to Revenant Jesus
Revenant Jesus wrote:
DarkView wrote:
Because freedom of speech clearly means you're allowed to say anything, anywhere, to anyone, at any time.

No, that is exactly what freedom of speech means. You are allowed to say anything, anywhere, any time to anyone you want to without fear of being executed. Of course you are going to have to be ready to accept the effects and response of what you say.

A good example is where I live, if you curse in public you can be fined for it. That isn't to say people will run up to me and stop me from doing it, but the fine is in place as a way to encourage people from not doing it.

That is completely against the first amendment. The first amendment protects against prosecution, that includes fines *or* execution.

If that is truly a law in your city/state, it is an unconstutional law.

Quote: "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech."

Secondly, you can't go around and say whatever you want to whoever you want. There is such a thing as slander and libel. You cannot knowingly say (or write) something untrue that causes the person to suffer harm (physical, mental and/or monetary).

And about the video, miranda rights must be read only when police are going to be questioning the suspect.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/mirandarights/a/mirandaqa.htm

And you'll notice they only began to escort him out after he went on about Kerry being in a secret order, the guy was over the top. They had every right to remove him from the premises, and likely only decided to arrest him after he started resisting. I don't know if they needed (or if they did) tell him he was under arrest.
Sep 23 2007, 6:30 pm
In response to Darkdemonrad
Darkdemonrad wrote:
So what, he pulled an attention seeking stunt. He shouldn't of been arrested for it. I don't think someone would get that hysterical if they didn't care. However i'm also positive he knew to make a big scene in public to probably draw attention to his point.

Why exactly shouldn't he have been arrested? It's not like the First Amendment gives us the right to be wild and shrill in public, let alone in a private venue. If this guy had been screaming like that at random people on the street, that too could have been cause for arrest. In this case the organizers of the event itself asked that he be removed; he had no right to stay at that point.

Also, if you don't arrest people who pull this sort of crap, do you think that magically, others who might follow in their footsteps will hesitate to do so? The fact that disorderly conduct can get you arrested is a sanity check on civilized society, giving sane individuals a heads-up that maybe they should try a different approach.

It's like with Cho Seung Hui, he had a point he wanted to make. Did it get across? no. It was censored, but he sure as hell tried to draw attention to his point? Did it get out, hell yes.

His message didn't merely leak out. NBC chose to broadcast it, a move for which they were rightly chastised (but not strongly enough) by outraged viewers. Also, he really had no point to make at all. He merely had an angry vent, which is not the same as a point.

And my point about giving him the attention he wanted stands. By airing the tape NBC made it all the more likely someone would follow in his footsteps. Indeed there's considerable evidence that what made this guy finally snap was seeing a Dateline piece on a similar shooter just the night before.

Did this guy's point get attention drawn to it? hell yes, however people are just more focussed on the tasering.

Which is completely ridiculous, considering he basically asked for it. Even if he felt the arrest was unfair, the police gave him warning after warning to stop resisting arrest. He was endangering their safety at that point.

This whole thing boils down to three questions.

1) Did he need to be forcibly removed? Given his level of agitation and pure freakout, I don't think there's room for reasonable people to disagree on this point. The longer video makes this even more abundantly clear; he had to go.

2) Did he need or deserve to be arrested? If one is intellectually honest enough to concede the first point, it follows that the arrest was necessary to remove him since he obviously wasn't going voluntarily. If he had gone on his own, it would have been different, but he didn't. Hence, there is also no room for reasonable people to disagree on the arrest itself.

3) Did he need that much force, including a near-dogpile and a double tasing, to be restrained? Following from the arrest being necessary, or at least it being done, the answer here is also yes. This point may not be as clear to many people whose only understanding of police work comes from crime dramas, but it can take multiple officers to subdue a struggling suspect. (Heck, on any given episode of Cops you run about a 75% chance of seeing proof of that in action.) The justification for tasing him stems from the fact that he was endangering the officers and he was warned many times to stop.

So to sum up, he brought the tasing entirely on himself by his actions and was given more than ample opportunity to avoid it. But clearly he didn't want to avoid it; he wanted attention. He wanted to be tased because he wanted the drama to make it to the national media. That perhaps forms the only basis for a valid argument that he shouldn't have been tased, yet he put the cops in a situation where they had to, for safety.

Lummox JR
Sep 23 2007, 6:33 pm
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Eventually they got one handcuff on, and at that point they had to get the other one on at any cost (otherwise it would basically be a weapon), and the only way to subdue him was to tase him.

Um....I'm gonna go out and say that if anybody needs a weapon to subdue somebody who doesn't have one, they suck. More accurately....a cop shouldn't need handcuffs or a weapon to get somebody to shut up. They could have used their hands just as easily. If you think that a person having one handcuff on them is a weapon, you shouldn't put it on them!

But seriously....use your hands. They had what, 4-5 cops and they needed HANDCUFFS and a TAZER to take down one kid? These cops shouldn't have the job if they can't do anything without weapons and numbers on their side. Let's count!

The kid has 2 arms, 2 legs. Nothing more in terms of weaponry.
The cops have total 8 arms, 8 legs, 4 pairs of handcuffs, and at least one tazer.

So...even if the cops are so foolish they can't do a thing without weapons, they had enough numbers for each cop to grap 1 limb with ease. The kid can't do anything after that, that's a much less violent way. But no...cops can't use their hands. It's like a law of nature that cops MUST use weapons to do ANYTHING. Jeez, aren't cops supposed to recieve training for this kind of thing?
Sep 23 2007, 6:48 pm
In response to Jerico2day
Yes, you can say whatever you want, to anyone you want, whenever you want, you simply have to live with the consequences. In a civilized society such as ours, we do not need to worry about execution for what we say. And that is what I mean. No one is stopping you from saying what you want to. Also, I took a few law classes and Slander can be a very, very, grey area of legality.

Also you are right it is against the first amendment. That is why, when a man in another state was given a $150 fine for cursing in front of a woman and child, when he fought it, the court was in his favor. That doesn't mean other states are like that. Where I live right now we have a law like that, which is still currently in effect. On how well it is administered, I have no idea.

Also, one last thing, in the last place I lived, both civilians and police were barred from using any sort of stun gun or taser after a few deaths when people with pacemakers and/or heart conditions died of the result. The people at fault for the deaths were Police Officers, but everyone was barred from using them. One of the Deaths was a Police Officer. It turns out that at the College in old town, when training in law enforcement, one of the things you have to go through is not only being hit with a baton but also being shocked with a taser so you know how it feels. One of the College kids in the class died from it.
Sep 23 2007, 6:49 pm
In response to Evil-Inuyasha
Evil-Inuyasha wrote:
Um....I'm gonna go out and say that if anybody needs a weapon to subdue somebody who doesn't have one, they suck. More accurately....a cop shouldn't need handcuffs or a weapon to get somebody to shut up. They could have used their hands just as easily. If you think that a person having one handcuff on them is a weapon, you shouldn't put it on them!

Ah, so this is in the magical land where handcuffs can be attached to both wrists instantly? Here in the real world, handcuffs have to be applied one wrist at a time. There's no other way to do it. Once one wrist is in, the other has to go in too.

They needed the handcuffs not to get him to shut up, but to get him to leave the premises as he wouldn't go peacably.

But seriously....use your hands. They had what, 4-5 cops and they needed HANDCUFFS and a TAZER to take down one kid? These cops shouldn't have the job if they can't do anything without weapons and numbers on their side. Let's count!

The kid has 2 arms, 2 legs. Nothing more in terms of weaponry.
The cops have total 8 arms, 8 legs, 4 pairs of handcuffs, and at least one tazer.

At least two tasers; it's in the report. But you're being ridiculous when you say it's perfectly feasible to just use their hands to subdue the guy. He was struggling wildly and mere numbers sometimes aren't enough to help stop that. By acceding to your misguided notion of fair play, they would have put themselves at a much worse risk of injury, which indeed is the reason why--after many warnings--they went ahead and used the taser.

So...even if the cops are so foolish they can't do a thing without weapons, they had enough numbers for each cop to grap 1 limb with ease. The kid can't do anything after that, that's a much less violent way.

"With ease" isn't based on anything but pure ignorance. Apparently you've never tried to wrestle a deranged man, or else you're a lot stronger than the average person. Only a limited number of people can get close enough to restrain him properly and he is very capable of still putting up a fight then.

To think that an all-out brawl, then, is much superior to getting the guy in handcuffs so he can be taken out of the room without further struggle, is ludicrous. Police officers have better things to do than to take a punch from every goon they try to arrest.

But no...cops can't use their hands. It's like a law of nature that cops MUST use weapons to do ANYTHING. Jeez, aren't cops supposed to recieve training for this kind of thing?

Dude, did you even watch the video? They did use their hands and arms, in spite of which he still posed a significant threat of injury. Nobody used a weapon of any kind against him until well into the struggle, and only then after multiple warnings to stop resisting, with a clear indiciation of what would happen if he kept it up.

You talk as if all cops always draw a nightstick or a gun at the first provocation and beat every suspect into submission whether they cooperate or not. The cops in this case were extremely reasonable with the student, who would never have been tased at all if he had simply submitted after (or before) one of the many warnings he got.

Lummox JR
Sep 23 2007, 6:55 pm
In response to Lummox JR
Meh, I caught that. I actually thought the dude needs to be beat senseless, but last I checked it is not illegal to be an attention-seeking idiot.
Sep 23 2007, 7:04 pm
In response to Jamesburrow
Jamesburrow wrote:
Meh, I caught that. I actually thought the dude needs to be beat senseless, but last I checked it is not illegal to be an attention-seeking idiot.

Correct, it's not illegal. It is however illegal to act on it in certain ways.

Lummox JR
Sep 23 2007, 7:23 pm
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
They needed the handcuffs not to get him to shut up, but to get him to leave the premises as he wouldn't go peacably.

I can agree with that. They may not have needed the cuffs to subdue, but to get him out of the building they'd need the cuffs.

At least two tasers; it's in the report. But you're being ridiculous when you say it's perfectly feasible to just use their hands to subdue the guy. He was struggling wildly and mere numbers sometimes aren't enough to help stop that. By acceding to your misguided notion of fair play, they would have put themselves at a much worse risk of injury, which indeed is the reason why--after many warnings--they went ahead and used the taser.

After watching the video again it was quite clear they could easily subdue him. Yes, easily. One of them (from the looks of it) picked him up. Enough force to not need a tazer. Towards the end it appears they got the cuffs on. Once they're on, there's no need for a tazer.

"With ease" isn't based on anything but pure ignorance. Apparently you've never tried to wrestle a deranged man, or else you're a lot stronger than the average person. Only a limited number of people can get close enough to restrain him properly and he is very capable of still putting up a fight then.

To think that an all-out brawl, then, is much superior to getting the guy in handcuffs so he can be taken out of the room without further struggle, is ludicrous. Police officers have better things to do than to take a punch from every goon they try to arrest.

Really though...they had enough to subdue him long enough to actually stop him from moving both hands before attempting getting the cuffs on. And obviously the use of weapons is superior to fists but that's where I start to believe in police brutality. If they don't need, LITERALLY DON'T NEED, weapons to subdue a target and they use weapons...I just believe it's police brutality. Cuffs aren't really a weapon, tazer is. Tazer wasn't needed at all. There's no arguement there, they just DIDN'T NEED the tazer for anything.

And....the guy merely flailed. He...didn't even hit them (in this video, it seemed incomplete) so aside from verbal shouting he didn't even PROVOKE the use of a tazer. I'm agreeing he deserved to be arrested, but they should have gone about it differently.
Sep 23 2007, 7:36 pm
In response to Evil-Inuyasha
Evil-Inuyasha wrote:
Um....I'm gonna go out and say that if anybody needs a weapon to subdue somebody who doesn't have one, they suck. More accurately....a cop shouldn't need handcuffs or a weapon to get somebody to shut up. They could have used their hands just as easily. If you think that a person having one handcuff on them is a weapon, you shouldn't put it on them!

But seriously....use your hands. They had what, 4-5 cops and they needed HANDCUFFS and a TAZER to take down one kid? These cops shouldn't have the job if they can't do anything without weapons and numbers on their side. Let's count!

Have you ever tried to hold down a person who is struggling? I can assure you that even with one person per arm and leg, the restrained person can still inflict considerable injury on the people restraining them -- including forearm smashes, punches, kicks, knee strike, elbow strikes, etc.

A taser is the "most efficient" means of taking down a suspect, meaning that only one person is injured during the takedown (the suspect). The officers, if they had resorted to hands and feet only, would have wound up suffering incidental injuries themselves, and the suspect still would have been injured due to the officers' needs to twist his arms and legs and otherwise lock his joints to prevent further struggling. As far as destructive potential goes, the taser is actually being a bit nicer to the suspect than the alternative beat down with nightsticks.

You act as though police officers wanted to hurt the suspect. They didn't, never have, and don't. The officer doesn't want to hurt the suspect, but suspects often don't give the officer any choice. In a perfect world, an officer would say, "You, sir, are under arrest" and the suspect would go, "Oh, dear! I am quite sorry! I shall come peacefully" and the officer and suspect would walk to the patrol car with one another, commenting blithely about whether it will rain. (Hell, when/if I get into the cops, I sure as hell hope most of the people I need to arrest will be like that. Generally, most people are cooperative, but some people aren't.)

An officer is specifically obligated not to hurt a suspect unless the suspect attempts to harm him/her. However, read that very closely: if the suspect attempts to harm the officer, the officer is allowed to harm the suspect. It doesn't have to be proportional, either: if a suspect slaps an officer across the face, you had better believe that the suspect is going to wind up with a faceful of elbow and a mênage-à-trois date with "pavement" and "arm lock".

Of course, an officer does have to measure the force compared to the risk s/he foresees -- so an officer can't just shoot someone who is charging with a raised fist, although s/he can certainly shoot someone coming at him/her with a raised knife. (In this case, I mean terminally. If the threat of being stabbed with a knife is sufficient justification for lethal force even in socialist-paradise-Canada, you can imagine what it's like in the United States.)
Sep 23 2007, 7:49 pm (Edited on Sep 23 2007, 7:55 pm)
In response to Evil-Inuyasha
Evil-Inuyasha wrote:
And....the guy merely flailed. He...didn't even hit them (in this video, it seemed incomplete) so aside from verbal shouting he didn't even PROVOKE the use of a tazer. I'm agreeing he deserved to be arrested, but they should have gone about it differently.

Yeah, this particular video has definitely been cut to cast the officers in the least flattering light. Also particularly noticeable is the sudden drop in contrast when viewing the officers standing over the suspect in the back, so it's impossible to tell what exactly is going on. =)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NWukZhsiBw shows a little bit more of the struggle; the tasering was probably done in retaliation for the time he charged into them when they were trying to get him out the back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVa6jn4rpE shows the officers warning him several times to stop resisting. They gave him at least six or seven warnings.
Sep 23 2007, 7:59 pm
In response to Jp
Jp wrote:
You don't taser someone who's just flailing around, even if he might have gotten a decent flail.

Actually that's one of the key reasons officers go along with them. Look at the older street cops who had ten years on the force before tasers became standard. They've generally got scars and junk on their face. Why? Because when someone is flailing wildly they latch on. They pull hair, they bite and they scratch. The face is the natural place it all gets focused on.

Of all the cops, security guards, ambulance drivers, etc I know they'll all openly admit they'd rather fight a solid wall of muscle that knows how to throw a punch than attempt to restrain a skinny female flailing wildly.

It's also pretty easy to be overly sympathetic to someone who gets stunned because it looks so bad. However at the end of the day it's a few seconds of heavy discomfort instead of ten minutes of actually hurting yourself.
Sep 23 2007, 7:59 pm
In response to Jtgibson
Jtgibson wrote:
Have you ever tried to hold down a person who is struggling? I can assure you that even with one person per arm and leg, the restrained person can still inflict considerable injury on the people restraining them -- including forearm smashes, punches, kicks, knee strike, elbow strikes, etc.

Yeah, I have held people down while they tried to get out of it. It really isn't hard to subdue a person (if you approach from behind anyway). He wasn't punching and kicking though. Lots of people, they could just bar his arms behind his back and...instantly in position for handcuffs.

A taser is the "most efficient" means of taking down a suspect, meaning that only one person is injured during the takedown (the suspect). The officers, if they had resorted to hands and feet only, would have wound up suffering incidental injuries themselves, and the suspect still would have been injured due to the officers' needs to twist his arms and legs and otherwise lock his joints to prevent further struggling. As far as destructive potential goes, the taser is actually being a bit nicer to the suspect than the alternative beat down with nightsticks.

Look, if they really had that much trouble to stop the flailing, sure. They didn't. In this situation they really didn't have any problem. I only saw tasering after he got hand cuffed. If...he had been fighting them off him and someone got injured, using a taser to GET him subdued might have been used. They still got him down after they actually tried. He was on the ground in this video without use of the taser. Perhaps you're right about taser being efficient and such, but it seemed excessive.

The guys in cuffs in the end. He's on the ground. Still shouting. At that point he is tasered. I'm saying any action past the point where he's already cuffed, not to mention on the ground, is just excessive.
Sep 23 2007, 8:15 pm
In response to Jtgibson
Ah....explains a little more. I still say he shouldn't have been tasered, my opinion. You're right also, you just can't see what's happening!

Oh, anyone else think they should have just told him what he was being arrested for? Really, he keeps asking, sounds as if a little less resistance might have come from him if they told him before tasering him. Not noticibly, but...eh.
Sep 23 2007, 8:35 pm
In response to Jtgibson
Jtgibson wrote:
In a perfect world, an officer would say, "You, sir, are under arrest" and the suspect would go, "Oh, dear! I am quite sorry! I shall come peacefully" and the officer and suspect would walk to the patrol car with one another, commenting blithely about whether it will rain.

I think I just woke the rest of the house with laughter. :)
Sep 23 2007, 8:43 pm
In response to Jtgibson
Jtgibson wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NWukZhsiBw

What the heck. Did he just say "They're going to try to kill me."? From the first video I thought he was a little bit mentally unstable, but that just reinforces it.
Sep 23 2007, 9:36 pm (Edited on Sep 23 2007, 9:55 pm)
This goes to everyone in this thread except for Lummox JR and everyone else who agrees with him:

You guys are stupid. Use your damn heads. I don't care how liberal you are or what you believe in. This clown ran up on stage in the middle of a Q&A and started screaming and babbling on and on about nothing and causing a scene. What do you expect people to do? Sit back and watch? You don't know what this guy is capable of or if he even has a weapon on him. Give me a damn break. Those police officers did the right thing. As a matter of fact, they should have ran and tackled the friggin' guy.

He was trying to resist arrest so a bunch of police officers joined in to hold him back. Whoever asked why more than one officer was holding him back is a damn fool. He was resisting arrest so to make it easier, more officers held him back. Do you expect the five other officers to watch that one officer struggle to contain that one guy? You're acting as if a few officers holding a resisting guy back is like twenty people beating a two-year-old baby's head in. They were freakin' holding him back! Geez! Someone else said something along the lines of, "why didn't the officers use their hands instead of using handcuffs?" Are you friggin' stupid? They have handcuffs for a reason. Why the hell would they use their hands to hold back his arms when they have handcuffs? What if the guy escaped? What if he hit one of them? What if the officers broke one of his arms while trying to hold him back the entire time and then got sued? He also wouldn't let the officers handcuff him which is why they tazered him. What did you want them to do? Beat him over the head with a friggin' nightstick? I swear, some of you just say some stupid things. Think before you speak.

*EDIT: If this guy actually pulled out a gun and shot someone, or whipped out a knife and stabbed someone, or even punched someone, all of you would be complaining and whining about why the police officers didn't do anything about it. I'm tired of people whining about why someone didn't do this, or why someone didn't do that. No side can ever win because people never use their damn heads and think, "hey, what if this guy was a maniac and did something terrible?"
Sep 23 2007, 9:50 pm (Edited by moderator on Sep 23 2007, 10:05 pm)
In response to Evil-Inuyasha
Evil-Inuyasha wrote:
I'm agreeing he deserved to be arrested, but they should have gone about it differently.


The guy was resisting arrest and struggling the entire time, even when handcuffed. They had no choice. What did you want them to do? Beat his head against the wall until he was knocked unconscious? The guy showed no signs of calming down. They friggin' tazared him, they didn't friggin' shoot him. It's not a big deal. They gave him a little shock to calm him down. You're acting like it was police brutality.
Sep 23 2007, 10:11 pm
In response to Evil-Inuyasha
Evil-Inuyasha wrote:
Oh, anyone else think they should have just told him what he was being arrested for?

I don't think he was even being arrested at that point. Sure, he shouted out that he was, but the cops taking him away didn't indicate that at all. He was simply being removed from the premises like you would be if you were causing a scene in a nightclub.
Sep 24 2007, 4:06 am
In response to Cavern
I generally agree with much of that, although the "You guys are stupid" part we could do without. Also, I don't think this boils down to a liberal/conservative issue, but a duh issue. Anyone who sides with the student is basically being reactive about the police using any force at all, rather than level-headed and honest about the situation. There's no rational basis for siding with him.

Lummox JR
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