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Wed, Nov. 22nd, 2006, 10:35 am

Remember that story about the campus police officer who tasered a student in the ass? well I'm not sure why I find the story so interesting but I've been keeping tabs on it (possibly because some of you mentioned waiting to see how the story would develop) and it doesn't get any prettier. He once tried to strangle a fratboy with a nightstick, shot a mentally ill homeless man who was in a campus toilet (he lived but it prompted the UCLA to invest $22,000 in tasers) and was *fired* by the long beach PD (or never really worked there depending on the version of the story). For all of that though, he was named the 2001 UCLA officer of the year.

Needless to say, there isn't any kind of history on the student coming out, nor a detailed description of events *before* the video was taken and plenty of idiot outrage about how his ID was *demanded* by the officers. Now I'll grant you that being a bollocks isn't a repeated tasering offence in my book (as I've said before, if it were there'd be three students left in the world with bladder control) but I don't buy the notion that he's an entirely innocent party in all this either.

The one of the stranger bits of the tale however is that what the officer did was in compliance with campus policy
 Leave a comment | 5 comments

Wed, Nov. 22nd, 2006 11:00 am (UTC)
specky_ie

It may be strange to us, but these events took place in the good ole U S of A.

I find it mighty scary that Ireland (a place where it now seems relatively easy to get your hands on a firearm, and where people seem increasingly willing to use firearms indescriminately, and where the judicial system seems to place observance of the constitution at the top of its priority list) seems to aspire more toward US values (a place where it *is* easy to get your hands on a firearm, and where people *are* already willing to use them, and where the right to bear arms is enshrined within the constitution) than toward more European values.
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Wed, Nov. 22nd, 2006 11:27 am (UTC)
mr_wombat

I blame the media - seriously. In the absence of any kind of moderate political hysteria they've had nothing to do but print news of murders and assaults that would ordinarially be third page footnotes. Crime rates are overall quite static, it isn't like we're seeing a massive increase in the rate of murders and whatnot, just an increase in the rate of reporting the headline crimes (ie, the ones that *always* get reported to the gardai - obviously real statistics on rape, abuse, molestation and similar are fairly unreliable).

For a moderately interesting read, take a peek at:
http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/crime_justice/current/headlinecrime.pdf
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Wed, Nov. 22nd, 2006 04:18 pm (UTC)
(Anonymous)

http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=39009
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Wed, Nov. 22nd, 2006 04:36 pm (UTC)
mr_wombat

I think I've read that article before and they make the fair point that rushing to a judgement wouldn't be the best idea. Like I said, while there seems to be little question regarding the fact or number of times that he was shocked, accounts of what led up to it are fairly absent. The history of the cop in question is suspect but shouldn't have too much bearing on events because even the best of officers could potentially have been justified in doing exactly the same thing under certain circumstances. Just sauing, that it doesn't seem entirely right to judge the cop on past actions when we haven't heard about the character of the student.

However, the articles in my post, combined with expert statements I've read saying that a taser can utterly incapacitate for ten minutes or so don't make it look like the officer was any kind of angel -
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Thu, Nov. 23rd, 2006 04:29 pm (UTC)
leftoftheedge

Tch. And to think we used to complain about the Buildings & Services staff in UCD...
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