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Ah...the smell of trolls in the morning
EDIT: Wow the UCPD taser incident sure is attracting a lot of angry, angry people to my blog. Who tell me what I should or shouldn't be writing about on my blog. Which I pay for. And they don't. Whatever, it's what I expect out of people like that (people who think just because they think one way everyone who doesn't must be a fascist pig. Or stupid. People who can't make an argument without resorting to name-calling or telling you to get a life. If the guy was asian I'd say...he got what he deserved. It makes no difference to me whatsoever. ANYONE who behaves in such a manner deserves to get tased. Anyway, I also wanted to clarify that although I did point out the fact the student is a "Persian-American" (as the press has called him) I do not think this incident came about as racial profiling. I think what happened is that the CSO's went around performing a routine check where they ask a wide variety of people studying in the library late at night for their student ID's. There is a policy of a students only environment after 11pm because the university has recognized the danger of predators waiting in the library to see who's leaving alone. Anyway, this guy probably didn't have his ID on him but also didn't want to leave and so decided he would just ignore the CSO's who were just doing their job. THe CSO's, following procedure probably called their supervisor who would have then also asked the guy to leave. When he continued to ignore all of them they called UCPD. As UCPD is arriving this guy finally decides okay, maybe it's time to leave. The police officer puts his hand on the guy's arm (which is totally okay in my book, but I'm sure there's those of you out there who will say even this shouldn't be allowed) to lead him out and the guy flipped out. At a police officer. He had ample time to leave. When the police officers got there he could have said, "Look sorry officers I'm just a little stressed out, I should have listened to the CSO's but don't worry I'll leave now." Instead he chose to act like a lunatic in a world that has gotten much more dangerous and incomprehensible. And at that point maybe the fact that he's of Middle-Eastern descent came into play. Not as a central reason for the incident, but just one more factor. The guy probably had fifteen minutes to leave between when the CSO's started asking him for his ID and when the police showed up. He didn't leave. Instead he chose to act like a jackass, ignoring a legitimate authority figure making a completely legitimate request. I'm willing to conceded that maybe the police did go to far in tasering (tasing?) the guy five (I've also heard four) times but I think they had a legitimate reason to feel threatened and the need for force. It was the "drive stun" mode which is used: Okay, I'm going to stop talking about this now because it's one of those things where we're never going to agree. Our judgmentss in this case are much too highly affected by our disparate worldviews. We're all looking at the same video and seeing two different things. So how can the two sides possibly agree? Despite the fact that I've been blogging for close to seven years now (holy crap, I'm getting old) I've never had many trolls. Maybe because I'm a girl (so trolls are less likely to start crap? I don't know, maybe hippies don't distinguish between men and women since we are all equals and everything) and I really have never established a large enough readership to have trolls. I have had a few troll-y comments left or emailed to me before and I'll admit I have been offended or hurt by some of them because that's just how I am. Thin skin, you know. But when a troll leaves me a message calling me "the stupidest..." and then saying he will not "stoop" to my level before proceeding to call me a "stupid chink" well...all I can do is laugh at that. I guess the reason this particular trolls panties got so twisted in a bunch over my previous post is because I *gasped* pointed out the obvious. We live in a world where I'm willing to bet virtually every American (including the Pakistani with his panties in a bunch) look at people of apparent Middle-Eastern descent, who also happen to be causing a ruckus in public, with an extra weary eye. If choosing to be honest rather than politically correct makes me a "stupid chink" in the eyes of "rage against the MAN" hippies then so be it. By the way I'm not talking about the commenter that left some thoughtful points to argue (and his signature), but rather the two anons whose comments don't entirely make sense and clearly just wanted to insult me. By the way, I've mentioned it before but I stick to it, people who leave anonymous comments are pussies. Hear that? Pussies. What I've noticed about the comments on the YouTube site regarding the video is that while everyone is watching the same video the responses fall in two separate categories - and only two categories. On the one hand you've got those who clearly have a pre-existing bias towards police officer, calling them pigs, etc. who all agree that there was a clear abuse of power because the police used the taser too many times, the guy was in handcuffs (although it is rather difficult to see in the video exactly when the suspect was put into handcuffs) and then there are still others in this group who claim that the officers should have just put him in handcuffs immediately and walked the suspect out (which probably would have still prompted shouts of "abuse of power" because since at the point when they arrived the cops were there only to escort the guy out and not to arrest him...and let's not even talk about the fact that it is standard procedure for cops to take people by the arm when they are escorting them out...ever seen Cops?). Where was I before all of those parantheses? Oh yes...the second group. The second group of comments generally goes something like this: "Guy got what he deserved, if you scream like a lunatic in cops faces maybe you will get tased. And guess what? I won't feel bad for you." I just find it so interesting that we all watched the same video. Every last one of us. And yet there are two completely different reactions to the same video, based not on the video itself but based on pre-existing attitudes towards "the man." As for anon commenter #1: I don't live in a police state. If I did, people like you would have been carted away long ago and you're still here posting on the internet so...why don't you try moving to North Korea? Or go to China and try to publish a paper criticizing Chairman Mao. Then you'll know what a police state feels like. America? Is the greatest country in the world NOT a police state and if you had a deeper understanding of history you would know that. Maybe more on this later...I'm late for an appointment.
Comments:
oohhhh shut up. you racist asshole. if he was asian youd be pissing your pants crying.
# posted by
 : 2:29 PM
Alright, This is the same "anon" who called you a chink this morning. To let you know that I'm not hiding under any anonymous label, my name is Ali Nabeel, Michigan. My email address is niya_yeshAThotmail.com. Jesse in the previous post said that I misunderstood your comment and thought that you are advocating excessive force if a person is from the middle east. So let's get this straight.
If you think that every person of the middle east should be regarded with suspicion, then I stand by everything I said before. I am not at all racist, but I will still call you a stupid female chink to make you realize how they feel when they're directed at you. Also, if I misinterpreted you, and if you don't think that, then I'm a stupid idiot for not seeing your point in the first place, and I apologize with sincerity. But I think not only me, but quite a few of the people here need clarification. # posted by
: 4:59 PM
"I'm guessing he's probably Persian? but that's just an educated guess) and we live in a post 9/11 world where, whether we like to admit it or not, we all give extra scrutiny to people who are behaving oddly and appear to be of Middle-Eastern descent."
yes you are right he is persian and looks like terrorists but said you are racist. i hate to see an ejucated person thinks like this # posted by
: 7:00 PM
I do not think it's necessarily *right* that every Middle-Eastern person be regarded with suspicion BUT I do think that it's a reality that when ANYONE and perhaps in particular someone of Middle-Eastern descent begins to act like a crazy loon in public and disobeying police orders he might get tased.
And to the anon poster above...yes isn't it a shame when "ejucated" people think for themselves instead of just swallowing the "fight the man" bs our professors spoon feed us?
I didn't think the post said a person from the Middle-East should be regarded with suspicion, but that he simply does. You might not want to and even consciously know that it is discrimination, but it happens. It happens because we make associations. Right now, in America, Terrorism is associated with people from where?
We all make associations. Read "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell and you will discover that you do too. Anyway, the CSO didn't single him out and check his i.d. and not the whole room full of other people. He wasn't being racist. I really don't think this could be a case of discrimination. I do think that the belligerent guy may have experience racism in the past and so that's why he had such an aggressive reaction to the police. In which case, the U.S. government gives social work agencies like the one I work at free therapy for those who have been affected by discrimination after 911.
Mostafa screwed up, but the cop who tazed him deserves to be fired for stupidly escalating an otherwise minor incident between a pissed-off student trying to make a futile point into an international (yeah, it's front page news in the UK, Germany, Russia, and just about everywhere else now) scandal that has successfully managed to validate every paranoia Mostafa and his fellow students might have had, and damaged relations between students and police for years. A cop who can't tell the difference between a street thug and bitchy drama queen doesn't deserve to wear a badge on any college campus. The cop failed his test the moment he needlessly escalated the matter with physical contact, where his mere presence appears to have been more than sufficient to get the job done.
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The fact that Mostafa apparently threw in the towel and decided to leave the moment he saw real police officers arrive strongly suggests that he never even considered the possibility of actual *arrest*. Experienced campus cops would have sensed that immediately (expected it, in fact), maneuvered into a nonthreatening position out and away from his direct path to the door, watched him leave, and gone back to the station for another donut... satisfied at having successfully defused another incident. Would Mostafa have tried a similar stunt again? I doubt it. He'd have seen, firsthand, that throwing a tantrum would achieve nothing beyond the eventual arrival of police, and probably lost most of his interest in doing it again. On the other hand, if he were in serious, complete denial of the possibility of being arrested, there are still things a properly-qualified officer would have done. Like telling him, politely but firmly, that he IS a real, honest-to-god police officer who WILL forcibly remove him from the premises if he doesn't leave immediately, and will arrest him if he resists in any way, shape, or form. He'd then give him a few moments for the "A" word and its implications to to sink in, then if that failed, one police officer would firmly take each arm and promptly march him out of the library. Among other things, if Mostafa had screamed at THAT point, everyone in the library would have thought he was a complete tool, because the officers would have acted in a way that just about any reasonable observer would have concluded is appropriate. Onlookers would have probably laughed at him. He probably would have been a laughingstock for weeks, instead of an overnight celebrity who'll likely be one of the few twentysomethings who can actually afford to buy a house in southern California once the university settles with him. This video is going to be shown a police academies for the next 20-50 years as a textbook-perfect case study example of how NOT to handle an angry, upset student throwing a tantrum. Anyway, that's one view from the (small "l", capital "R") libertarian Republican quadrant of the political map (most of whom in this case are utterly horrified by the thought of actually *agreeing* with the people we'd usually view as loony leftists, and feeling shame over sharing the same nominal party affiliation as some really sick, sadistic goons elsewhere on the 'net who actually think being physically and psychologically abused by their parents while growing up is something to *brag* about, or believe having a "compliant" populace that unquestioningly bows down before authority is a *good* thing)... (c) 2001-2006 transcended.net - all rights reserved |
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