Student tasered at John Kerry event - Page 2

The real story would be if they'd tasered Kerry, endowing him with personality and gravitas and inspiring him to change his name to Johnny Elektro.

Watching the video, I don't know, I see the guy's face and I totally get a "Hey ya'll, watch this!" vibe from him. And having videos of other pranks of his up on the web doesn't really lend him an air of validity.

And any way you cut it, he was physically resisting arrest. If he had just calmed down and let the police walk him out of the building, chances are he a) doesn't get arrested and b) has a lot more sympathy to his cause. But kicking and fighting like he did, those cops don't know if he's going to get more violent and possibly pose a danger to themselves, so they used non-lethal force to restrain him.

It does seem like Kerry couldn't see the actual tasing from his vantage point, so it doesn't surprise me he didn't say anything about it.

Preventative tazings are far too rare these days.

I was at the gym yesterday, and they had "Hardball" on, and they were discussing this. One of the guys (I think the host) said, "If we're going to start tasering people just because they're being obnoxious, then I'm in a lot of trouble." I think it was more than that--if you resist arrest using any kind of physicality, the cops (university or not) basically have the right to use whatever force they deem appropriate. Which is usually a lot of force.

My school's cops actually carried guns, and there was one guy in particular that would pull his gun on you for spitting on the sidewalk. Some of them were a little too gung ho for what they were doing.

University cops are actually security guards with more weaponry than the said security guards.

We had a comedian on campus one time that put that in his act. He said, "Man, and your cops carry guns! What's up with that? Do they kick in your door at 8:30 in the morning with guns drawn and scream, 'YOU'RE LATE FOR HISTORY CLASS, DIRTBAG!'"

From JohnKerry.com:

I can't speak for any other school, but the UAPD here is a legitimate police force that does everything a normal police force does. They are certainly NOT just security guards with weapons. I imagine the UF police are similar considering that UF has a population the size of a small city.

Re: Kerry's response: Ass covered.

Kerry deserves to be tasered. Singer too. Owen also.

In fact, let's just taser everyone in this thread just in case, myself included.

Well, when we get tasered, please don't whine as much as that guy did. You can yell a little but don't keep screaming "OW!" for five minutes.

I don't think the Taser was necessary, but the guy clearly deserved to be removed from the presentation. When he resisted the officer's attempts to remove him, he deserved to be arrested. Still, I think six officers (or however many there were) can subdue one jerk without using the taser.

That's really all there is to say on the subject. On the excessive side, but nothing compared to what protesters with legitimate aims* have been subjected to over the years, and will in all likelihood continue to endure in the future.

*I don't mean this in a "aims I agree with" sort of way, just people who are honestly trying to draw attention to a cause and not themselves.

"You eat when we say you eat. You shit when we say you shit. You piss when we say you piss. You got that, you maggot dick motherfucker? "

When I was a youngster livin' in the city, my roommate and I found a frigging stun gun on the street. We spent that evening tasing each other to see what it felt like. The pain was nothing compared to the creepy gay shame of 2 dudes electrocuting each other for fun in their apartment.

Jackass.

Yeah, six cops had the guy pinned down but they could not remove him from the situation in the position they had him in. They had one wrist cuffed and could not get his other arm behind his back because he was still resisting arrest. At this point the cops can sit on the guy and let him scream for the rest of the time and interrupt the proceedings or they can pick him up and get him out of there.

With one hand in cuffs any attempt to move him gives him leverage to begin flopping around again like a fish thus increasing the chances he severely injures himself or someone holding onto him. At this point the officers notice that several other students are closing in on their position with this guy and are beginning to yell shit like police brutality and the situation is possibly in danger of escalating beyond their control.

They have three choices:

1) Continue to sit there right on top of him and let this guy interrupt the proceedings with his yelling. While sitting on him they also deal with the increasingly irrational Women's Studies and Poli Sci majors that are yelling at them.

2) Force his arm into the necessary position to handcuff both wrists and at the very least tear several muscles turning the guy into Rookie of the Year and at worst they break his arm. These send him into considerably more pain and open the PD up to more liability than tasering him does.

3) They taser him, giving themselves the momentary loss of motor control they need to finish restraining him without causing him unnecessary damage and allowing them to remove him from the situation so that things can return to some semblance of normal.

YEARS before Jackass! Home video equipment wasn't where it needed to be. Plus, I'm WAY uglier than Johnny Knoxville.

Edit: Oops! Wrong thread.

If I ever get tasered, I'm going to go through the process with dignity.

Which is to say I may piss myself and cry like a baby while curled in the fetal position, but I will never, ever say "Don't tase me, bro! NAGGGHAHGAGHAGHAGHGHGAEEEE!"

http://www.printfection.com/freeandrewmeyer

So taser guy has a website selling stuff to ostensibly pay for his legal fees. I might be interested in buying a shirt if it was cheaper and a little more creative with its design, maybe a fist behind bars or something to commemorate the most stirring phrase since "let's give peace a chance".

Plus, I don't really want to support that guy.

Anyway, I'm sure somebody here could come up with something better that we could put on Cafepress or wherever.

This is what is amazing, six cops have a guy pinned down and they can't control the situation without using tasers?

The guy wasn't any type of threat to anybody, but if 6 cops can't handle somebody like this, then they have bigger problems over there than jerks asking stupid questions.

Obviously you never saw the "I Survived Auschwitz And All I Got Was This lousy T-Shirt!" shirt.

This is my lame attempt. They only let me pick crappy background colors for the t-shirt.

Like I said, they couldn't move him until he was cuffed because that gives him room to flop around and hurt someone. They either taser him or break his arm. Then you could truly claim police brutality.

They didn't know he wasn't a threat. We know that fact afterwards because the guy has a prank site. The cops in the moment didn't have that luxury.

Doesn't matter how many cops have him pinned down; if he can still thrash about he is now a danger to himself and others.

Why is is that bouncers can get the most unruly, inebriated monster out of a bar without weapons, but we give our cops permission to electrocute douchy college kids that are already completely subdued just because...well, because he was warned? I don't get it.

I think it's funny that the kid got tased, and I love the video. But we're talking about abuse of power that's just being excused these days. If they had turned a fire hose on him, would you be excusing that?

He wasn't harming ANYONE. Yet, you're excusing bodily harm to be done to him. That's fucked up.

You're really poor at being Libertarian.

Here's another taser story about a guy who got tasered by cops in his home in Pittsburgh. This one I actually got upset about.

He wasn't brandishing a weapon, nor trying to physically harm anybody. Let's put things into context, he was simply being obnoxious and speaking out of turn. That's it.

I get it, it's funny, the guy is a jerk. But I really am concerned about people just shrugging this off. What if they did this to a political protester, would you be ok with it too?

You know, this whole thing about liberals supposedly picking the wrong battle is bullshit. "This guy deserved to be tasered, don't make this into a bigger issue than it is." Or, "Oh, nooses on a tree isn't a big deal to get upset over." Or, "Hey, so protesters have to protest in special designated areas. They still get to protest! What's the problem?" Or, "Yeah, we have freedom of speech, but Move On shouldn't have said what they said about General Petraeus. It's wrong."

It's a slippery slope, and I'm tired of it. You can only make excuses for so long for the party, it's always a special circumstance that THIS time, it's okay to infringe on someone's rights because they behaved badly. It's never okay, never, and I'm sick and tired of people trying to justify their fascist tendencies. In for a penny, in for a pound.

For all intensive purposes, the guy was a politcal protester.

Also I laugh at the "well he was warned that he would get tased" defense. Ranks right up there with "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

The campus cops/security guards should NOT have tasered the guy. Six of them could have controlled him and they had him pinned and could have just held him there till he gave in. I've seen that done numerous times by cops/guards. Of course they didn't have taser guns to yank out whenever they liked.

With that said, this guy is still incredibly stupid to keep fighting after hearing the words "stop fighting or I will tase you."

Your MoveOn ad example brings this to mind:

There's a huge difference between "He/She/They/It shouldn't say it/print it/skywrite it" and "It should be illegal." Part of free speech is having the freedom to tell people to shut their pie holes.

This particular thread brings this to mind: free speech does not, to the best of my knowledge, include the right to disturb the peace.

What does "disturb the peace" mean?

It's "for all intents and purposes."

And, no, he wasn't a political protester. This is a political protest. You tried this already. "Political protest" implies that he had some point beyond "LOOK AT ME!!!" He really, really didn't. He was being a whiny bitch, spewing nonsense, and getting way out of line to draw attention to himself. That said, he shouldn't have been tasered, though I don't know what else security could have resorted to to remove him from the area safely.

Yeah, was this kid making a point? He's just up there rambling. He should have been escorted out, maybe not arrested, definitely not tasered.

It's unfortunate that out of all the police brutality cases that occur, this is the one getting the most attention. The kid really does seem like a dick, so you've got assholes on both sides of this battle. No matter who wins...

Oh, so are you the judge of what constitutes a poltical protest? Maybe we'll fly you in to every demonstration from here on out so you can adjudicate whether the discourse qualifies.

(by the way, thanks, teacher)

I'll sign up for that job. Please give me the South Pacific region to police. It's nice down there.

So if I drop my pants and shout "Equality for the boll weevils!" on the Capitol steps, that's a legitimate form of political protest?

What was this bro protesting? This does nothing but hurt the left-wing/liberal agenda. If people like bro want to affect some change, they should get beyond the desire to establish their freedom of speech/protest, and they should make a clear point about what they want and how they want it to be achieved.

At some point, I think he was protesting getting tasered.

Oh, don't be a dick just because I've questioned your argument. Red herrings and ad hominem attacks are so boring. Can you explain why you consider this person to be a political protester? Because I honestly don't see it and you simply stating it over and over again doesn't make it true. Moreover, I think calling the attention grab of an obnoxious college boy a political protest is offensive and it devalues actual political protest.

Such lip on you! You're just lucky I didn't steal a page from DaveB's playbook and grade you.

edit - Frank, stump, Richard, you're all lovely. I'm never leaving this place. Ever. Equality for the boll weevils!!

That doesn't mean it's not a political protest. All political protests are mostly just self-centered attempts at attention. Whether or not they're important in the 'grand scheme of things' doesn't dismiss what they are.

It's kind of the 'is a bad artist an artist' argument.

Yeah.

4realz??