UCLA Campus Police Tasering

This is a very late post, but I want to get this out there.

Last Tuesday, November 14th 2006, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, an Iranian-American UCLA student was shot 5 times with a taser gun by UCPD officers (campus police) because he could not show his student ID when requested. It’s school policy that after 11pm campus police check the IDs of the students in the library to make sure everyone who’s there is allowed to be. Tabatabainejad is a UCLA student but did not happen to have his ID with him that night, which is when the trouble started.

I really can’t sum up what “the trouble” is any better than the video does, so watch it and you’ll see where the outrage is coming from. This video was shot by a student using his cell phone. In the very beginning you can’t see much until he stands up from behind the computer, but you can hear the audio clearly the whole time. It’s sickening and disturbing, which is why it demands action.

Contact the UCLA Police Department and express your disapproval of how the situation was immorally handled. This kind of brutality, ethnic profiling, and abuse of power cannot go unpunished.

• Dr. Norman Abrams (Interim Chancellor) – chancellor@conet.ucla.edu
• Dr. Daniel Neuman (Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost) – evc@conet.ucla.edu
• Dr. Maryann Jacobi Gray (Assistant Provost) – mgray@conet.ucla.edu
• Dr. Robert J. Naples (Assistant Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students) – dean@saonet.ucla.edu
• Karl T. Ross (Chief of Police) – kross@ucpd.ucla.edu
• John Adams (Captain) – adamsj@ucpd.ucla.edu

Here’s the email I sent:

I’m not a UCLA student, nor do I even live in California. I’m an Ohio resident and student at Ohio State, but most importantly, I’m a human. A human writing to express my complete disgust and anger towards the actions of the security officers involved in the Powell Library tasering incident. To read UCPD’s pathetic attempts to justify the repeated tasering of this student is insulting. With so many witnesses and video/audio evidence to back up the students’ claims, to say that Tabatabainejad was encouraging others to “join his movement” is ridiculous. The only movement those students were joining was one of human decency and outrage at the officer’s abuse of power and the violent assault of a fellow student.

How dare any security officer use a taser on a non-violent student even once, let alone five times. Why do they even have tasers in the first place, they’re not real police officers! If he was refusing to move (or was it because he was repeatedly tasered so he couldn’t move?), they could have picked him up and carried him. Obviously these officers have never been tasered before since they used it as willingly as a squirt gun.

It is not enough to simply fire these officers or any other slap-on-the-wrist reprimanding. They need to be punished for real. It’s tempting to say you may as well taser them five times to see how they like it, but I am choosing to take the higher road than the officers took. Don’t let these officers get away with such a disgusting crime.