As expected, CAIR is jumping all over the following story and making more of it than there should be, and twisting the facts.
First, the cell phone video admittedly does not record all of the incident. Nobody has asked why only selective parts have been put on Youtube. Second, subject is a 23-yr-old senior, not some freshman new to the facility and unaware of the security procedures. Imagine the screaming from parents and students if nobody was checked and a suicide bomber went into this place and killed a bunch of the little darlings who are so offended by this "brutality." Also, though the reporters of this story do mention his yelling out about being a "martyr: and calling for help from others to resist, they fail to mention that this is basically an effort by this man to incite a riot and spool the situation up well out of the control of the officers on scene. His own actions forced them to do everything they could to silence him and put an end to this as quickly as possible, to prevent it from escalating and involving more students. If you feel you are being ethnically profiled, go out peacefully and merely ask others around you to witness your departure, and then file a complaint about possible profiling. You do NOT stand there and refuse repeated requests, go limp, make it difficult to move you, and then call for others to become "martyrs." This is being played up in the LA media along with other recent cases of a gang member being punched in the face to get him to let go of a cop's gun belt in a struggle and some nut screaming like a hysterical woman in the back seat of a police car after being doused with pepper spray. The incidents have been recorded and they look bad to the uninitiated, but nobody is asking why the guy is screaming bloody murder and if this isn't simply further evidence that the man was out of control to begin with. If you scream like that, for whatever reason, you're missing a few oars in the water, to begin with. Some hear that as pain from being brutalized. I heard it as a psycho really going off of the deep end and, in all likelihood, having exhibited precisely the kind of radical behavior that needed to be subdued in the first place As for UCLA, I have a simple solution to the need for security checks of people, for the sake of safety. Close the library at dusk. Then you don't have to worry about sexual predators, laptop thieves or muggers being in their midst. Would the whining and protesting students prefer that? Don't think so. By the way, the photos in this article tend to focus more on the uniform protest signs. The wonders of modern word processors and printers. Only a small number were original and hand-made. These people are not exhibiting independent thought and real outrage, but merely parroting the organized sentiment of certain groups. Few facts are known and these groups are twisting what little is confirmed. Somebody should be asking why. Was this a setup? Did the suspect do something deliberate to attract attention? Why is the camera video selective? Was the person with the camera in on this possible setup? By all means, let's do have an investigation--a thorough one to examine all aspects of this case, not just the cops. R http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-taser18nov18,1,5727331, full.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage UCLA orders outside probe of Taser arrest The move comes hours after a protest march by more than 200 students. By Richard Winton, Rong-Gong Lin II and Charles Proctor, Times Staff Writers November 18, 2006 <http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-taser18nov18-pg,1,2981 05.photogallery?coll=la-headlines-frontpage> UCLA student protests <http://www.latimes.com/images/icons/photoicon.gif> Photo Gallery UCLA student protests <http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-taser18nov18-pg,1,2981 05.photogallery?coll=la-headlines-frontpage> _____ Hoping to calm the furor created when UCLA police used a Taser to subdue a student studying in Powell Library, the university's acting chancellor announced Friday that a veteran Los Angeles law enforcement watchdog would head up an independent investigation of the incident. Norman Abrams said he ordered the probe after the university received numerous calls and e-mails from parents and alumni raising concerns about the officers' actions during the videotaped Tuesday night arrest, which has been widely seen on TV news and the YouTube website. "I want to assure them that the UCLA campus is a safe environment. Student safety and treatment are of paramount concern at UCLA," Abrams said. "We plan to move ahead promptly with a complete and unbiased review." Abrams appointed Merrick Bobb, who was a staff attorney for the Christopher Commission and currently works as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors' watchdog over the Sheriff's Department, to handle the probe. Abrams said Bobb has a proven track record looking into allegations of police misconduct, including the Rodney King beating and more recently the riots at the L.A. County jail system. The move came hours after more than 200 students marched to the UCLA police station calling for an independent investigation into the Taser incident as well as the suspension of the officers involved. Wearing signs reading, "I am a student, don't Taser me" and chanting, "Tasers out of UC," the protesters said it was an inherent conflict of interest for university police to handle the investigation of their own officers. "What was done was unnecessary," said Rahmatullah Akbar, a senior majoring in psychology. "We as students don't deserve to be Tasered." Tuesday's incident occurred about 11 p.m. in a library filled with students studying for midterm examinations. According to the university, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a 23-year-old senior, was asked for his ID as part of a routine nightly procedure to make sure that everyone using the library after 11 p.m. is a student or otherwise authorized to be there. Campus officials have said the long-standing policy was adopted to ensure students' safety. Authorities said Tabatabainejad refused repeated requests by community service officers and regular campus police to provide identification or to leave. UCLA Police Chief Karl Ross said the officers decided to use the Taser to incapacitate Tabatabainejad after he went limp while they were escorting him out and urged other library patrons to join his resistance. Mavrick Goodrich, a chemical engineering major who observed the incident, said Tabatabainejad shouted, "Am I the only martyr?" Some witnesses disputed the officers' account, saying that when campus police arrived, Tabatabainejad had begun to walk toward the door. Tabatabainejad's attorney, Stephen Yagman, said his client refused to show his ID because he thought he was being singled out because of his Middle Eastern appearance. Tabatabainejad is of Iranian descent but is a U.S. citizen by birth and a resident of Los Angeles. The student was shocked five times with the Taser, Yagman said. Another student used a cellphone camera to record portions of the incident, in which Tabatabainejad can be heard screaming in pain when the Taser shocks are administered. One of the issues Bobb's investigation will examine is whether the officers complied with the university police rules for using Tasers. Several local police agencies - including the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department - allow officers to use Tasers only if a suspect poses a physical threat or is acting combatively. The sheriff's policies expressly say deputies can't use Tasers simply to move someone. "We look for assaultive conduct," said Bill McSweeney, chief of the sheriff's leadership and training division "We generally don't use the Taser on passive resisters except when an individual indicates explosive action to follow, such as a verbal threat." But UCLA police are allowed to use Tasers on passive resisters as "a pain compliance technique," Assistant Chief Jeff Young said in an interview Friday. Under UCLA policy, Young said, officers can use the weapons after considering the potential injury to police and to the individual as well as the level of resistance and the need for prompt resolution. Young described Tabatabainejad as a "passive resister" who refused to cooperate with officers. He acknowledged that the student didn't actively resist the officers. "He was 200 pounds and went limp and was very hard to manage. They were trying to get him on his feet," Young said. The officers used the device in stun mode - which affects only the part of the body being touched - rather than the dart mode, in which tiny electrodes are fired into a person and pass a current through them, disabling the person entirely. Young said police have used the Tasers "on several occasions" before but said he didn't know how many times. The officers involved in Tuesday's incident were off duty Friday but had not been placed on administrative leave. On Friday, many students remained outraged over Tabatabainejad's treatment. "Once you have him subdued, you don't have to keep Tasing him," said Rohit Mahajan, a psychobiology major who watched the video. "You could see him crying. He's not a threat. He's maybe acting like a smartass, but he doesn't" deserve that. The protest march was organized by leaders of the campus Muslim and Iranian American student groups. They support Tabatabainejad, though some demonstrators said they didn't think the officers' actions were motivated by his ethnicity The American Civil Liberties Union also said that it was examining the incident. "It is an appalling and traumatically excessive use of force on someone passive-resisting," said ACLU attorney Peter Bibring. "The officers seem so confident in what they are doing. They need to change their policies and training." UCLA officials urged students and others to withhold judgment actions until the investigations are completed. "Not all the events of Tuesday evening can be heard or viewed on YouTube," Ross said at a news conference with Abrams. The acting chancellor expressed confidence in and respect for the UCLA police, and noted that Ross' department would continue with its own internal investigation. "But there are times when it is helpful to turn to an outside review as well," Abrams said. _____ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. 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