Something seems amiss in the muddled aftermath of the Nov. 14 Powell Library Taser incident. Anthony Pesce’s “Report examines use of force” (News, Aug. 6) chronicles the alarming ambivalence of the university and specifically UCPD with regard to ameliorating the conditions that allowed the incident to spiral out of control. While the relevant officials have said all the right things, the campus has yet to see substantive policy implementation to avoid a recurrence of such a violent and unnecessary exigency.
Pesce quotes former Chancellor Abrams as saying, “We learned that it is useful to provide a window into what happened and to be transparent.” Are we to believe that Abrams just discovered the usefulness of transparency? Does this imply that previously the Chancellor’s office was being deliberately obfuscatory? If this is Abrams’ position, then I call on him (or more accurately, his successor) to release the still-unpublished UCPD report of the incident. That would be transparent.
I was also extremely disappointed at the Undergraduate Student Association Council’s complacency on this issue. Pesce quotes USAC President Gabe Rose as saying, “I think both the university and Chancellor Abrams should be commended for taking this very seriously in the aftermath. It was commendable to commission the independent investigation.” Rose is right. But as president of the foremost student advocacy association on campus, it would behoove him to advocate serious adjustments of university/UCPD policy to make the campus safer for the students that USAC represents.
Are we so amnesic that we have forgotten what occurred? The author of the newly released independent investigation remarks upon its outset that “this story has no heroes.” But according to Pesce’s summary, Tabatabainejad never offered anything more than passive resistance, and he only did so after UCPD officers had used a Taser on him. So let us ask ourselves, almost a year later, where are we now?
Can we please stop with the let’s-not-and-say-we-did approach to this thing? How about some accountability? Allow me to remind the student body that no disciplinary action has been taken against any officer for this incident, despite the fact that one of the officers involved also committed a controversial shooting of a homeless man on campus in 2003. Has anyone raised the issue that this officer might be a liability to student safety rather than an asset? New policy and better training are good ancillary measures to take in response to this problem, but glossing over the record does nothing to address what may be a potentially endemic crux: the use of unnecessary force.
The question that looms large over this entire fiasco is: Who will pay the cost of Tabatainejad’s mistreatment? For my part, I would not wager that it will be any UCPD officer given that the unreleased UCPD report found no official wrongdoing. No, rather I would guess that the bill will be paid by California taxpayers and alternatively the student body. For once Tabatabainejad has had his day in court, I expect he will be awarded significant damages, paid from university coffers. Every student will be affected by proxy, be it from reduced services, or higher fees. Is this justice? Something seems amiss.
Luskin is a fourth-year political science student.