Trust me, I’m a Daily Bruin columnist: Column 2

Last Tuesday night, after refusing to show his BruinCard to
university police officers, UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad was
viciously stunned with a Taser five times.

We barely had to wait until morning for the Internet to become
abuzz with premature accusations and unsubstantiated
speculation.

Our parents’ generation had to wait around for days for
silly nuisances such as verifiable facts to come out and even
months for lengthy investigations to reach reasoned and judicious
conclusions.

Thank God for blogs.

Video of the incident has found its way onto YouTube, gaining
national attention. While it doesn’t show what happened
before the altercation began, I think we can all agree that the
police were in the wrong.

The protest held Friday was right to demand an independent
investigation into the incident to figure out if any of the actions
taken by UCPD were wrongful.

Protesters’ commitment to a judicious, independent inquiry
was obvious, with such chants as “U-C-P-D, you disgust
me.”

“U-C-P-D, let’s have a fair and balanced
inquiry,” just didn’t have the same bite.

Protesters also wore signs on their shirts saying,
“I’m a student, don’t Taser me,”
reaffirming the well-known fact that students are always compliant
with police officers and never act in a way that merits a physical
response.

The video taken of the event shows the skirmish quite clearly
from behind a bank of computers and a crowd of students.

OK, so you can’t see much, but the audio is still quite
telling.

The police were demanding that Tabatabainejad stand up, while
simultaneously sending electricity through his nervous system,
something that could paralyze him temporarily if the shocks were
longer than three seconds.

Fortunately, I watch a lot of “CSI: Miami,” so I was
able to quickly deduce from watching the video that the shocks were
all 3.1 seconds long and immediately shared this information with
my Facebook friends.

What the police officers did was torture. We might as well
rename it Guantanamo Library, the Abu Ghraib computer lab or some
other overblown, inappropriate analogy.

The assumption that Tabatabainejad was targeted because he is of
Persian descent is, of course, completely true.

Unsubstantiated assumptions usually are, and who really has the
time to wait for the results of that inquiry to be released?

Al-Qaida has been widely rumored to be threatening such
landmarks as the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge and the
Powell Library CLICC Lab. UCPD officers clearly let the terrorist
paranoia get to their heads.

Are we, who think the officers were flat-out wrong, jumping to
conclusions? Perhaps, but isn’t that what higher education is
all about?

UCPD should reflect on this incident, re-evaluate its Taser
policy and consider selecting a less-violent tool for subduing
students. I would suggest 15th-century Samurai swords or
anthrax.

Whatever it takes to prevent another student from being stunned
with a Taser ever again.

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