Police brutality is not exactly abnormal. Its seems to have become part of the normal run of things. It happens often and with regularity. As if the state mandates it. Just as KRS-One put it.
But my severely optimistic head never expects it. I would never expect it at all. And everytime I hear about when it, I feel disgusted angry victimized angry mad lost hurt.
This is how I felt yesterday when I first heard about what happened at UCLA at the Powell Library, which was mere minutes from where I was studying. UC cops were checking undergraduate students at the Powell Library’s computer lab for IDs. Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a Persian UCLA student, did not have his ID and after some time, the cops were tasering him repeatedly because of his ‘non-compliance.’ They were asking him to stand up but kept tasering him (which immobilizes muscles and often prevents control of one’s body for up to 10 minutes). Students gathered round and many people recorded the incident through their cell phones. After being tasered several times, the cops took Mostafa to a holding cell and later released him.
Mostafa was never asked for an alternate means to show he was a student. Is it justifiable that a person should suffer massive electric shocks for not having a small piece of plastic? How much power should police be given in regulating a computer lab?
The video can be linked to here through the Daily Bruin. Be careful, its really disturbing. I couldn’t watch all of it.
There is much more that needs to be done about this. A google news search of “Mostafa, taser, UCLA” will uncover more than 100 news articles, including a few indicating that Council of American-Islamic Relations is justifiably calling for a deep investigation into all of this. The LA Times calls this a third incident in a recent wave of cell phone videos documenting police brutality.
While this was happening, Mostafa was yelling “Here’s your Patriot Act…here’s your abuse of power.” Those who are at UCLA, pressure the UC Police Department and anyone else who has abused their power at the UCs to conduct a full, thorough, and impartial investigation into all of this.
Update – Here are some things you can do:
Contact the UCLA Police Department and express your disapproval of how the situation was handled: http://www.ucpd.ucla.edu/
Contact UCLA Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams About the Incident at Powell Library:
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
Glad to see others are noticing this – come talk about it!
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Left by Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast on November 16th, 2006