John Kerry, University of Florida, Tazer

I didn't see it on the board anywhere, but i'm not much of a narrirator.

long and short - kid gets tazered for asking questions in a PUBLIC FORUM!!!

News story, for those of you who like knowing what actually happened.

Fuckwit University police should not have Tazers.

(note: that's "fuckwit police at Universities", not "police at Fuckwit University.")

"One may come to the aid of another being unlawfully arrested, just as he may where one is being assaulted, molested, raped or kidnapped. Thus it is not an offense to liberate one from the unlawful custody of an officer, even though he may have submitted to such custody, without resistance." (Adams v. State, 121 Ga. 16, 48 S.E. 910).


as much as i prefer to be non-violent, i honestly think that these situations where kids get tasered and arrested just for being kids should end in the police being forcefully prevented from abusing people. how many videos are there out there now that involve someone getting their ass kicked and subsequently electrocuted while a crowd of people can only videotape it for evidence later?

or what about the case of the middle-aged minister who had his leg broken last week? how long are we going to let them beat us up and throw us in jail for "resisting arrest" when the arrest was wrong in the first place?

I'm keen to see some pro authority types wade in here, but what the fuck were these idiotic fucking campus police hoping to accomplish? WTF has happened to reasoned approaches from the police force? This makes me so fucking angry.

As an advisor to several high school post graduation centers, I have written the university to inform them that given the failures of Florida government, the abusive behavior of Florida law enforcement, and the University's apparent inabilty to protect our most basic rights, that I wiil not continue to recommend students consider those colleges for higher education.

That was very painful to watch. I hope those "officers" are arrested. I'm pretty truly disgusted by that.

Fucking QFT. Yet more reason to kill cops. If I ever see something like this happen, I hope I have the courage to attempt to physically stop the police from doing anything like that. In other words, i'd hope for this outcome



Also, I don't like John Kerry, but you gotta admit the man had class for telling the police he wanted to answer the question.

If they were police officers, they should have the standard gun, pepper spray, and tazers. A lot of public universities do have actual police assigned to campus.

However, if these were private security, a university shouldn't arm them, and they also have no right to forcefully detain someone like that, and someone would be well within their rights to pull a firearm on them for pulling what they did.

He also condemns the police reaction.

However, that remark is so stupid I don't even know what to say.

The Patriot Act? Unitary Executive? A growth of authoritarian power in the US?

Fucking seriously.

Oh, and also, could any lawyers comment on resisting an unlawful arrest?

Im googling but getting conflicting results. It looks like the suggested method is just to take it like a bitch and then pursue it in the courts aftwerward, but some pro-gun sites are saying its legal to fight back including up to lethal force

The guy deserved to be arrested because he wouldn't leave when asked to and fought the police. However there was no real need to tazer him since they could have just man handled him into cuffs since they had at least 4 big cops on him. The guy was also kind of a dick and pushed to the head of the line.

How was the arrest unlawful? He was asked to leave and wouldn't.

The tazering was excessive force because they could have just manhandled him into cuffs but the first part seemed legal to me.

Well he was resiting. If you think that your arrest is improper the place to take that up is in the courts and not trying to struggle with the cops.

IMHO because all he did is ask a question in a public forum and possibly even more importantly did so on public property.

the University isn't considered public property. They can ask you to leave. The problem wasn't that he asked a question it that he wouldn't stop asking questions. There was a line of students behind him waiting to ask questions also. And according to the report I heard from Kerry the guy pushed to the front of the line.

And even if the arrest was improper the place to take that up is in the courts and not fighting the cops.

However the use of the taser by the cops was excessive force.

From: The Miami Herald

I have read on other political boards that Mr. Meyer was also running around campus earlier proclaiming that 9/11 was part of the Bush Campaign and that the whole 9/11 event was set up by the government.

Mr. Meyer didn't follow the rules. For one he wasn't even supposed to get to ask a question, got crybabyish about it, John Kerry gave him the okay to ask a question, and those are the two questions he asked? Then the students running the forum asked the cops to remove him from the situation, at which point he decided he didn't want to go. He was asked to leave! It's not like the cops up and decided to remove him.

It was obviously a ploy for attention. He got what he wanted. Attention. The side effects of that attention was a tazer.

A tazer is a non-lethal way to incapacitate an unruly person. Even if there were "four big cops" why do you think that the cops want to get kicked at, scratched at or hit at all? The cops used the tools they are trained to use to incapacitate someone and remove them from the situation. Who says that after they let him up, he wouldn't start swing like a wildman? He's already to the point where he is resisting, what's next?

No offense "man handling him into cuffs?" If you're resisting me that much, and you have trained and given me tools that are going to make my job easier, what do you think i am going to do? This guy is jumping, pushing, screaming and what looks to be kicking at officers. I take that as a threat to their safety. I am done trying to "man handle" i am going to incapacitate you.

Being a cop anymore is the worst profession around. Think about it. They are under constant watch by the media, and anything they do in a situation is put under strict scrutiny by people who weren't even at the situation.

I can be calm, cool and collective while sitting behind a computer scrutinizing something i see on Youtube, but if put in that situation, that would more than likely change. Watching a fight and being in a fight are two different things entirely.

Here's one for you. Reverse the situation a bit. This guy isn't removed from the situation, he is allowed to speak, and all the sudden pulls a gun out and shoots John Kerry, what would your reaction be to how the cops reacted then?

I honestly don't think the cops did anything all that wrong. Pepper spray wasn't an option because of the crowd, a tazer will pick out a single individual. This guy was asked to leave, he didn't, the students running the forum asked the cops to get him out of there, they did it.

You've just proven your opinions and comments on this thread irrelevant because of that statement alone. Congrats.

Because there appears evidence in that those videos that the campus police escalated the situation. There isn't any evidence that he was trying to incite a riot, as the police reasoned his arrest. He's just an obviously excitable kid who, in an attempt to ask a question, drew out his supporting argument.

It is justifications like this that make me worry for the future of this country.

Is there a level of the police over-reaction that you will not apologize for.

I am just curious is all.

That's a retarded argument. You went from 'it's an attention grab' to 'he's an assassin.

All I saw was a annoying kid trying to ask a drawn-out question.

He was asked to leave by the people putting the event on. He chose not to. He put up a fight with the cops.

He was then told "Calm down or you will be tazered". He then chose not to calm down. He got tazered.

If i am acting an ass, and screaming some pretty left or right winged ideas, and then i am asked to leave and don't, i would fully expect to be removed from the situation. If i begin fighting with the people that are removing me from the situation, i fully expect them to do what they have to do to remove me from the situation.

If i came on SG and started running my mouth about the staff and the girls, and saying some pretty radical things, even if they were true, i'd still expect to be banned.

Believe it or not, tazering can be done for many reasons. One of them being the safety of the person being arrested. If the person being arrested continues to struggle as the cuffs are being put on, they can do extreme damage to themselves, like breaking bones, or tearing muscles or tendons, the damage is long lasting, as compared to the tazer blast, which usually incapacitates you for a few seconds and you may wet your pants.

Not to mention the damage he could do to the cops. If he hurts the cops, they file a worker's comp claim, Tuition goes up next year to cover costs.

The dude was asked to leave, he didn't. He was then told to leave, he didn't, he was then forced to leave and he fought. His fault.

how is that retarded?

Because if we dissolve the debate to making outlandish claims with no factual information to back it up, the person who makes the most wild claim wins.

Let me try one:

"The kid was actually a evil Martian alien named Ron who had come to steal John Kerry's soul, so they could sell it on the black market to the Chinese. The only thing that can stop evil aliens from Mars are tazers."

because you're making up an outlandish situation and using it as justification for what really happened. your argument is, essentially, that an unarmed kid surrounded by cops who was willing to leave peacefully was a potentially deadly risk that warranted an arrest and the use of significant force.

That's not really an accurate description of the event, though.

The kid asking the questions doesn't seem at all willing to leave peacefully. Initially 2-3 cops start escorting him out, and he breaks free from them and rushes towards the stage.

What should the cops have done then?

that, i believe, is the key point here. the kid was trying to ask a question that Kerry agreed to answer. for years now people have been denied entry to events, cordoned off in sanctioned protest areas, and denied their basic right (and responsibility) to ask questions like this of people in power -- Kerry at least had the grace to try to answer it.

he was impolite, yes, but politely standing by isn't exactly how a populace stays free. if he were violent or threatening, sure, keep the other people in the room safe, but asking a question is not a reason to take someone down, tase them, and arrest them.

with regards to the question earlier about how the law relates to resisting unlawful arrest: Your Right of Defense Against Unlawful Arrest. allowing yourself to be unlawfully arrested and sorting it out in court later is basically saying "fine, do whatever you want, the Fourth Amendment is that big of a deal anyways."