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wow.  amazing video.  The question is what did they want him to stop for in the first place?  What was the provocation for the 1st tazing?

All I see on the video is the police telling a kid to do something, and he’s clearly not doing it.  So he gets tased. I don’t see what the big controversy is.

DMB - According to reports, he didn’t produce his university ID card and “wasn’t cooperating” with the campus police.

Dave K - The use of a taser several times on the student notwithstanding, if you listen to the video - at the very least its clearly outrageous to threaten witnesses with tasers just for asking for badge numbers.

Dave K, the officers violated several basic principles of police work, and they committed at least one crime. Most importantly, they failed to heed the maxim “use the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve the desired results”. Furthermore, they portrayed themselves as agitators rather than as calm enforces of the law. The result was a far more hostile situation than was necessary. Seriously: the situation involved a stubborn kid who wouldn’t leave a library. That requires neither being a jerk, nor a violent response.

As for the crime they committed, my understanding is that in California the threat of unwarranted violence is assault. Without question the officer who threatened violence upon the individual(s) asking for the officers’ badge numbers is guilty of that crime.

In a just world, the stubborn student and the officers all go to jail for the crime of extreme idiocy. In this world, the student will face trumped-up charges and the officers will receive the UCLA Meritorious Service/Taser Award.

Most importantly, they failed to heed the maxim “use the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve the desired results”.

If tasing the kid didn’t get him to leave the library, then perhaps the minimum amount of force to get him to do so was to break his legs and carry him out on a stretcher.  The kid was stubborn, and an idiot, which is why he got tased when he didn’t do as the officers told him. 

Your application of the threat law is silly.  The kids were interfering with the officers’ execution of their duty, which was to get the kid out of the library.  Police officers are afforded many rights when doing their jobs that most citizens do not have.  Though I’m not sure, I’d be willing to guess that threatening kids who are interfering with them is one of those rights. 

It’s nice that you label police officers as criminals with before all facts of the story are known.  It’s also nice that you think the situation was the fault of the police, when this would have been a non-story had the kid just gotten up and left the damn library.  Who would you call if someone broke into Who are you going to call when someone breaks into your home?

You know, Dave, it’s funny. I remember when conservatives like yourself weren’t willing to unwaveringly cede such authority to the state, least of all in situations involving egregious abuses of power and threats of violence against persons innocent of any crime. How times have changed, eh?

Are you referring to the authority for the police to enforce local laws?  If so, please provide examples of when I or the conservative movement have ever been unwilling to grant that authority.  But I suspect you’re broadening the terms of state authority to mean taxes and other things we don’t like the goverment to do.  You should know better than to think that makes any sense.

I always give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt.  You consider the threat to tase students interrupting the officers as a ‘threat of violence’.  I, on the other hand, view that as an appropriate use of threat to allow the officers to complete their duty.  It’s a fundamental difference in point of view, one under which you view the police as the adversaries, and the criminals as the victims.  That point of view, through which liberals see the war on terror, as well as local and federal law enforcement, is destructive.