Friday, November 17, 2006

The Oppression will Be Televised

The bad news is that police do stuff like this.

The good news is that, when it happens in public, technology gives eyewitnesses an opportunity to record what happens and try to get accountability.

I have no idea what happened before this video started: the tazed student did seem very disturbed already and his reaction was clearly politicized (one report says that he thought he was being profiled). Nonetheless, I can conceive of no excuse for the repeated tazering of a handcuffed person, or for the threat to taze bystanders who susbsequently asked for the cops' identification.

I think criminal prosecution of the campus police involved is possible and a civil suit is a 100% certainty.

On some level, I find the comments appended to the YouTube version of this video even more disturbing than the video itself. I am deeply distressed by the number of people who seem to find it a) funny (wtf?!?) because of the way the guy screams in pain or b) an example of just deserts because of failure to immediately and silently comply with authority.

And for those commenters who complain that the students didn't do more to intervene... when was the last time YOU jumped in between bullies and their victim (extra points for cases when the bullies were armed with disabling weapons and you were unarmed; extra super bonus points for occasions when the bullies were legal authorities). No? Okay then: stfu.

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