UCLA campus police torture student, in the library

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

From what I see he is handcuffed. With him flailing like that I don't think there is anyway other then being handcuffed to keep his hands in that position.

It certain sounds like he was zapped. But I guess I could be acting. This is a situation where the video evidence is inconclusive. But along with student testimony it seems as though he was tasered while handcuffed at that point in time.

'"Tabatabainejad was also stunned with the Taser when he was already handcuffed, said Carlos Zaragoza, a third-year English and history student who witnessed the incident.

"(He was) no possible danger to any of the police," Zaragoza said. "(He was) getting shocked and Tasered as he was handcuffed."'

 

[twisting_edge]

I'll elaborate.

You're right: I did miss the second half of that last sentence.

The student presented a difficult, challenging, but nonviolent situation and there was no reason to do anything but handcuff him and carry him out.

My apologies (not sarcastic), but after reading the, "The student presented a difficult, challenging, but nonviolent situation and there was no reason..." I'll admit my eyes sort of glazed over.

I agree that simply handcuffing him and carrying him out of the building would have made more sense all around. I've actually written precisely that same thing here two or three times myself.

But it's difficult to tell beforehand how far things will go. Given the choice between stunning him four times or dragging him out, they doubtless would have dragged him out. But given the choice between stunning him once and dragging him out, the stun makes a lot more sense. There's no arrest, nothing on the kid's record, no arraignment, no judge involved, and no parents complaining about "unnecessary arrest". Give the kid a shock to show you aren't joking, and the matter goes away. That is probably the policy they were instructed to follow with campus rowdies (this kid definitely seems to fit that description, no one here has tried to claim he was very smart about it yet).

 

[0rthodontist]

It may be the case that there is no approved way for several officers to forcefully carry a handcuffed but resisting person. But I'll need good evidence for that, because it seems like the kind of thing that would be common knowledge. I mean, a lot of criminals probably resist being taken into custody after being handcuffed and subdued--do officers need to use a stunner every time? What do they do?

 

[Evo]

'"Tabatabainejad was also stunned with the Taser when he was already handcuffed, said Carlos Zaragoza, a third-year English and history student who witnessed the incident.

"(He was) no possible danger to any of the police," Zaragoza said. "(He was) getting shocked and Tasered as he was handcuffed."'

The video clearly shows that is not true.

 

[Gokul43201]

Heck, I just learned from my mom a few months ago that when I was a little kid, I pulled my shoulder out of its socket by going limp when she was trying to drag me out of a department store! If the cops had done that, that's an instant lawsuit!

Yet, that is exactly how they finally do drag him out at the end.

Evo...I don't know what else to say. You think the way his feet went flying up above his head was a stunt he pulled off? You think that scream (identical to the one he let out the first time he was zapped) was not because he was being zapped again? Okay then...rewind to 1:48. This is the second time he's being "tazed", and he's already cuffed. Besides, it's not possible that the first time was the only time he was tazed - the police statement acknowledges that he was stunned "multiple times". I'd bet he was cuffed no later than just after the first time he was zapped. The subsequent 3 or 4 zaps all happened after he was cuffed.

Does anyone else here who's seen the video think we wasn't cuffed for the last few tazings, or am I the only one that's got it wrong?

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

The video clearly shows that is not true.

The video is hardly what I would consider clear.

 

[russ_watters]

You guys (and Evo) are missing the point with this issue over whether or not he was zapped after being handcuffed: I don't know if he was or not, but it doesn't matter. Just because you are handcuffed does not mean you can't still be physically resisting and posing a threat.

In the first minute or two of the video, when he was on the ground cursing at the police and inciting the crowd, I don't know if he was handcuffed or not, but surely everyone can see that either way he was physically resisting a lawful order. That is a physical threat!

Maybe some of you need to take some notes here: if a police officer tells you to do something and you do not, that makes you a physical threat. You can be physically forced to comply.

 

[russ_watters]

Yet, that is exactly how they finally do drag him out at the end.

Yes, I know - the lesser means failed. Yeah, that's right - using the stun-gun was less use of force than physically carrying him out of the building.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

I'm not trying to make either point. I'm just saying it looks like he was handcuffed while zapped.

 

[twisting_edge]

I mean, a lot of criminals probably resist being taken into custody after being handcuffed and subdued--do officers need to use a stunner every time? What do they do?

I don't think he was stunned again after being handcuffed. Evo seems pretty sure about it, and she's watched the video repeatedly. (I only watched it once.)

I think my explanation of the police activity makes a lot of sense. For whatever reason, campus security called in the police. The police were prepared for trouble, and the guy was definitely not co-operating, as several people have pointed out (myself amongst the first). You can tell that just from the soundtrack of the video. When he said he agreed to leave, he really meant to say, "I alerady agreed to leave after I make a scene." If he had actually left, he would not still have been there to say he had agreed to leave. In fact, he would not have been there when the police arrived after campus security called them.

Stunned once and no record is better for the student as well as everyone else. It's not an unreasonable policy. But if he still doesn't leave after that, then what do you do? You are still facing the same policy decision: stun him once (more), or arrest him? Only when it becomes clear you are going to have to stunner multiple future times does the policy decision change. Each subsequent application of the stunner is seen as a choice between a single (further) application or putting the guy under arrest.

 

[Evo]

Yet, that is exactly how they finally do drag him out at the end.

Evo...I don't know what else to say. You think the way his feet went flying up above his head was a stunt he pulled off? You think that scream (identical to the one he let out the first time he was zapped) was not because he was being zapped again? Okay then...rewind to 1:48. This is the second time he's being "tazed", and he's already cuffed. Besides, it's not possible that the first time was the only time he was tazed - the police statement acknowledges that he was stunned "multiple times". I'd bet he was cuffed no later than just after the first time he was zapped. The subsequent 3 or 4 zaps all happened after he was cuffed.

Nope, LOOK at the video, really LOOK. They link their arms under his arms and he kicks his legs up and yells. Do you see anyone firing a tazer? NO. Anyone struggling would kick their legs up that way.

Watch the rest of the video. No taser. hmmmmm...

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

"You're going to get tased, you're going to get tased again if you don't stand up"

Then the boy screams and flails. Also note the crowds reaction suggests something more then just the boy chucking a fit.

Also if it was just a fit then the timing is weird. Note how the officers hardly move? So it's not like they're grabbing his arm and pulling him which is why he fits, if it was just a fit then it is a VERY random moment to fit where they're just saying "You're going to get tasered" over and over.

If the camera man got closer then maybe you could see whether they were holding a taser there or not. But the video is fairly inconclusive.

 

[twisting_edge]

Nope, LOOK at the video, really LOOK. They link their arms under his arms and he kicks his legs up and yells. Do you see anyone firing a tazer? NO. Anyone struggling would kick their legs up that way.

Evo's right. The scene at the top of the stairs (c. 3:15) doesn't involve a stun gun. All the reports indicated the tasers were used as a stun gun, no one claims they were fired.

There are exactly two policemen, each one grabbing one of his arms in both of theirs. It does look from his reaction like he is being stunned again, but who is doing it? Did one of the policemen grow a third arm? It is possible one or both of them reached around his body with a taser in his hand and shocked him in the chest, but the simpler explanation is they are doing exactly what they appear to be doing: reaching around to get a grip on his upper arms to do precisely what everyone here says they should have done in the first place: drag him out of the building and book him down at the station.

 

[0rthodontist]

Do the use of handcuffs automatically make it an arrest?

 

[russ_watters]

This article on police guidelines for the use of force may be helpful... http://www.pti.uiuc.edu/news_articles/lawonline/useofforcequide.htm

It seems to me that he transitioned from a passive to an active resister, but regardless - even the passive resister is subject to use of things like pepper spray (the article does not mention stun guns, but they would fall into the same category).

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

Actually after examining it again I think he is definitely hand cuffed but possible not tased (it could be an act).

Here is an MSpaint thing I drew.

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/245/cuffedholdtb1.png

The black is the cuffed subject, and the yellow is the cops and the blue is the weird looking hand-cuff.

When ever I see those shows on TV where they follow real cops around as they make arrests they ALWAYS hold the guy EXACTLY like this. The cuffs stop the guy from moving his arms in a away so that he can pull his arms apart. And with the force provided from the policemans arms he can't pull his hands in together (which the cuffs would allow). This fully immobilizes the persons arms. Now when the guy chucks is fit (or is tazered, which ever you prefer) his arms stay in EXACTLY the same position as his flails about.

 

[twisting_edge]

It does look from his reaction like he is being stunned again, but who is doing it? Did one of the policemen grow a third arm?

I'd be willing to bet this is exactly what that eyewitness saw, too. His reaction looks like he is being stunned, but he's not. He's just freaked out over having had his nice little impromptu political triumph over the uneducated pigs turn into such an astoundingly painful experience. He is utterly disoriented, and probably convinced he's going to be dragged out into the woods and left with a bullet in his head. Things are not going they way they were supposed to, and he has no idea what to expect.

I know from personal experience that it is very easy to freak out like that when being muscled around by the cops. I also know from personal experience it can be a big, big mistake.

 

[Gokul43201]

Nope, LOOK at the video, really LOOK. They link their arms under his arms and he kicks his legs up and yells.

Sure be quite the acrobatic move to make your feet fly up that high above your head. And the "yells" sound exactly like the "yells" you hear the first time he was zapped. LISTEN to the yelling from 00:30 to 00:33 (first zap) and then the yelling from 3:13 to 3:16 (third zap) - and also compare these with the yells when he gets zapped the second time (also after he's cuffed) from 1:46 to 1:48 (just seconds after being warned that he's going to "be tazed again"). Then tell me the first one was a scream from the pain but the subsequent ones were not.

Do you see anyone firing a tazer? NO.

The officer to the right of the student has his right hand free (his left hand is under the student's right arm). The right hand and the entire front and parts of the right side of the student are not visible.

Watch the rest of the video. No taser. hmmmmm...

As I pointed out earlier. He appears to be handcuffed even earlier, in fact. But nevertheless, how many times do you count him getting tazed? The official statement by the police says he was tazed "multiple times".

 

[Evo]

Do the use of handcuffs automatically make it an arrest?

Usually it does.

 

[Evo]

Gokul, I've witnessed arrests, I've witnessed murders. The automatic response of someone sitting that grabbed from behind when handcuffed, alarmed, frightened, confused, would be to fall back and kick their legs up. That is so natural.

 

[NateTG]

Well, to be honest, he -was- resisting, and he -was- trying to incite others. Both of these behaviors are exactly what drive police officers nuts, and exactly the opposite of what you should do when you disagree with an officer's actions. Futhermore, it doesn't look like the student was actually Tasered -- the Taser shoots darts from a distance and has the sole purpose of completely immobilizing a person by knocking them out cold. The police were actually using a stun gun, apparently set to a pretty low setting, since the student obviously never came close to losing consciousness.

Taser's website doesn't claim that it knocks people out (http://www.taser.com/) nor does stinger's (http://www.stingersystems.com/). Assuming it's actually non-lethal, the most plausible scenarios for knocking somone out with a stun gun is clubbing them with it, maybe someone falling on a floor and hitting their head, or, if the probes land in a fortunate geometry there may be cardiac arrest (very dangerous) and suffocation because of a convulsing diaphragm (also very dangerous especially considering the necessary time frame).

 

[Gokul43201]

Gokul, I've witnessed arrests, I've witnessed murders. The automatic response of someone sitting that grabbed from behind when handcuffed, alarmed, frightened, confused, would be to fall back and kick their legs up. That is so natural.

Even if he can shoot his legs up in the air like that...it still doesn't explain the EXACT same cadence of the screaming (which is different from yelling), as well as the fact that we see him being tazed more than a minute before this point, AND HE'S ALREADY CUFFED THEN.

Forget the whole thing that happens at 3:14. Look at his tazing at 1:47.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

@nate

Chroot got sort of pissed that people use "taser" synonomously with "stun baton".

The 'taser' they're referring too is not the one that shoots off wires.

 

[twisting_edge]

Do the use of handcuffs automatically make it an arrest?

Basically, yes. You are under technically arrest (and this probably varies by state) whenever you are deprived of your freedom of lawful action by the authorities. That probably isn't the right wording, but it is certianly close enough. Note that it does not require physical retraint: if a policeman tells you to stay where you are, he can either make it an order (usually by telling you you are under arrest) or a request. If it is an order, he has deprived you of your lawful action, and you could probably successfully argue you were under arrest even if he didn't tell you so explicitly.

You aren't under arrest only after you are read your Miranda rights, you are read your Miranda rights only after you are under arrest. People often confuse cause and effect.

 

[DaveC426913]

Nope, LOOK at the video, really LOOK. They link their arms under his arms and he kicks his legs up and yells. Do you see anyone firing a tazer? NO. Anyone struggling would kick their legs up that way.

Watch the rest of the video. No taser. hmmmmm...

You can hear the taser going off at least twice: 0:31 and again at 1:49. The sounds are almost masked by his screams. I'm just reporting facts here.

Maybe someone with better speakers than me can pick up others.

 

[twisting_edge]

When ever I see those shows on TV where they follow real cops around as they make arrests they ALWAYS hold the guy EXACTLY like this.

I agree with your graphical interpretation, and agree that it is a classic police move.

Which of the policemen has the third arm doing the tazing? Each of the policeman would be using both his hands to grab one of the detainee's arms to lift him up. The fellow was refusing to (or incapable of) standing. They'd have each used to hands to get him to his feet.

There's only two policemen next to him. No one has yet claimed the tazers were used as anything other than stun guns. They require physical contact to work, and there is no one else near him except those two policemen.

 

[twisting_edge]

You can hear the taser going off at least twice: 0:31 and again at 1:49. The sounds are almost masked by his screams. I'm just reporting facts here.

But he wasn't handcuffed at that time. The argument there is whether or not he was zapped at 3:15, when he was clearly handcuffed (at the top of the stairs).

I am convinced he was not.

 

[Moonbear]

You guys (and Evo) are missing the point with this issue over whether or not he was zapped after being handcuffed: I don't know if he was or not, but it doesn't matter. Just because you are handcuffed does not mean you can't still be physically resisting and posing a threat.

I agree on this point completely. Before police had tasers, the only means of subduing someone already in handcuffs, but still resisting (i.e., kicking and flailing their legs, which can hurt a lot more than hitting with his fists), was to pile on the officers and hold him down. The problem is, there's a real risk you're going to injure him with a bunch of police officers suddenly pushing down on him, including too much force on his chest and keeping him from breathing. And, once they're all piled on, there's still the matter of trying to get back up again to move him. The taser immobilizes him in a way that is safer for him, not more harmful.

And, in this case, as you follow the footage, it seems he was handcuffed before going down a flight of stairs (it looks like stairs in the video), so they were probably trying to get him to walk down the stairs himself rather than risking him or themselves falling down the stairs if they tried to carry him while he was still actively resisting.

But, after watching the video...and listening carefully...I don't think he was tased after being handcuffed. Each of the prior times he was tased, the "zap" was audible. I don't think those two officers actually had a hand free to tase him while they were holding onto his arms, and it looked like the other officers were busy with crowd control (once the other students started getting involved and escalating the problem, it got more important to get him out quickly and get the scene back under control). The way some of those students were interfering and getting in the officers' faces, those officers really could have arrested them as well for that interference.

Since the footage starts with the guy shouting and swearing at the officers, it's hard to know what happened to lead up to that. He could have been inebriated, or in an otherwise altered mental state, to have been so belligerent. Most people would be ticked off if they forgot their ID and had to go back to get it, but usually they're ticked off at themself for being so stupid to have forgotten it, or if in a really bad mood, might cuss a bit at the security guard for enforcing the rule, but then they know it's not going to really get them anywhere and leave. To scream and shout and resist multiple police officers over something that could have been so easily remedied by just going back and getting an ID if he really was a student really makes me think there was something much more to the situation that led him to be so completely unable to be reasoned with that it had to get to the point of having him forcibly removed from the building and arrested.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

@Twisting

Donno. I've made up my mind on the subject already and nothing is going to change it so like Dave I'm just reporting the facts and proposing alternate evidences of different arguements.

 

[Evo]

You can hear the taser going off at least twice: 0:31 and again at 1:49. The sounds are almost masked by his screams. I'm just reporting facts here.

Maybe someone with better speakers than me can pick up others.

I don't deny that the stun was used on him. He needed it. I DON'T see it after the handcuffs.

 

[DaveC426913]

Jeez, I started off horrified but, as I watched it more than once, and analyzed the events more objectively, it pains me to confess:

I don't know what else the officers were supposed to do.

Frankly, I thought commanding him about a thousand times how to not get tasered was arguably a lot more lenient than they should have been in order to contain the situation. They did pretty much the minimum possible.

So, that raises the question:

What should the officers have done differently?
(and no just saying "they'shouldn't have tasered him". Say what they could have done to contain the situation.)

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

What is interesting that after the first zap they instantly, and I mean instantly tell him to get up repeatedly starting as soon as they zaped them.

 

[NateTG]

I've never been picked up that way, but I suspect that picking someone up by their bicepts when their hands are handcuffed behind them would be extremely painful and perhaps cause damage to the shoulder.

You know, they did use a very similar technique as torture in Vietnam, right? Guys like John McCain never regained full use of their arms because of it.

Actually, as far as I am aware, the torture method is to lift at the wrists which dislocates the shoulders. Very different.

 

[DaveC426913]

Has it occurred to anyone that carrying a handcuffed resisting or at least potentially resisting citizen down a flight of stairs is more dangerous than subduing him first? The cops were doing what they needed to do to ensure no one - even the victim - got injured.

 

[0rthodontist]

Okay, well it seems likely that he could be carried without too much danger, though care should be taken. I'm not sure what part of the video TE is referring to where the officers carry him. Maybe I am looking at the wrong things but it looks to me like both officers (if there really are 2--it's hard to tell and the news articles don't seem to say) seem to be just standing around much of the time.

I don't think the student can be classified an active resister. The main thing he was doing was not standing up--yelling does not constitute "resistive movement."

I can see how an officer might want to give the student an initial shock to show that they "mean business." I believe it was absolutely the wrong action. If he wants to come peacefully, they should not shock him because that would deteriorate the situation. If he seems combative and oppositional, they should not shock him--at least, not a light shock--because that would have little real effect besides pain, and it would just anger him and make him more oppositional, which it did.

I think that the reason they shocked him again (and again) was because he said he would leave--that means to the officers that he intends to stand up on his own and walk out, and puts them in a frame of mind that having him walk out on his own is the goal, rather than carrying him out.

I don't think they acted anywhere near correctly but that does make their action more understandable. If they were dead set on using the taser, they should have at least given him more time, maybe 5 minutes, between shocks to recover and possibly stand up voluntarily.