In my opinion, he was asking for it.
When Mostafa Tabatabainejad refused to present his BruinCard in
Powell Library when asked during a routine check by Community
Service Officers, scoffing at them and police, it created an
uproar, the fallout of which has graced airwaves and prompted
headlines internationally.
Whether or not the police used excessive force, there is no
doubt that the student showed a blatant disregard for UCLA’s
regulations and police authority.
Most people are only aware of the latter part of the incident
““ the police repeatedly using a Taser on a handcuffed
student.
They therefore come away with a mistaken account of the
incident, missing critical events that caused the violence of the
situation to escalate.
Tabatabainejad refused multiple police demands to leave Powell
before any force was used, according to a university police
statement. The police were called when Tabatabainejad refused to
leave after being asked repeatedly to do so by CSOs.
Though the student eventually started to leave after the police
arrived, he began to resist them.
At this point, when the student stopped cooperating, the police
began to use the Taser on the student.
The disobedience continued. On the video, you can clearly hear
the police officers asking Tabatabainejad to stand up.
“Fuck off,” he replied.
“Stand up, or you’ll get Tased again,” an
officer said.
The police repeated the command for the student to stand up 23
times before using the Taser on him the second time.
Still he refused to stand. Watching the video of the event, I
counted a total of 73 requests by the police for the student to
stand up.
Many question the use of any force in this situation, but force
is not without its purposes. To keep the rest of us safe, officers
expose themselves to the constant threat of violence, and some
officers see their colleagues killed in the line of duty.
For this reason, there are certain tactics police use in order
to protect their own lives, tactics that may seem brutal or
heavy-handed if taken out of this context.
We now know, in hindsight, that Tabatabainejad was not
dangerous, but he might have acted in such a way to make the police
worried about potential danger. People should take this into
account before jumping to conclusions.
Regardless of whether or not the police used excessive force, we
should all agree that Tabatabainejad is at least partially to blame
for his less-than-brilliant behavior.
Student responses to the incident have been varied. At least
four Facebook groups have already been created, including “I
forgot my BruinCard.. please don’t TASER me” and
“Powell Taze: Taze Him Again!”, representing opposite
responses to the occurrence.
There is even a protest planned for today, taking issue with the
police handling of the situation. On the Facebook page he created
for the event, third-year business economics student Combiz
Abdolrahimi calls for the protest on grounds that racial profiling
was responsible for the situation.
But attempts to paint this as an issue of racial profiling
really stretch the facts. I ““ who by no means look middle
Eastern ““ have been asked to produce my BruinCard by
CSOs.
If I then refused to comply with the directions of the CSO
““ being asked to leave ““ I would fully expect to be
treated somewhat roughly by the police.
People of any race are regularly carded by CSOs after 11 p.m.,
at which time those without UCLA IDs are asked to leave. In this
case, the whole situation was created by the student acting
out.
Posters littering campus promoting the protest pose the
question, “Since when is it OK to Taser students?”
I’d like to suggest an answer: It might be OK when the
student picks a fight with police officers.
It would be wise to postpone the instinctual reaction to partial
accounts of the incident, and consider that we enjoy a certain
amount of safety because of the vigilance of our CSOs and police.
For their sake and ours, it would be a good idea to listen to these
officials when they’re going about their jobs.
Send your favorite Rodney King jokes to Lazar at
dlazar@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.