A large portion of the blogosphere is outraged this morning over the Tasering of a student who was trying to ask Sen. John Kerry a question at a U of Florida campus forum. Let it hereby be known that I am not one of them.
Everything I've read suggests that I would have Tasered that airhead long before. Let's read the details:
"He apparently asked several questions -- he went on for quite awhile -- then he was asked to stop," university spokesman Steve Orlando said. "He had used his allotted time. His microphone was cut off, then he became upset."...
... [Andrew] Meyer struggles to escape for several seconds as up to four officers try to remove him from the room...
... Meyer screams for help and asks "What did I do?" as he tries to break away from officers. He is forced to the ground and officers order him to stop resisting...
Oh, and there's this excerpt from a statement from Kerry afterwards:
"In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way," he said in the statement. "I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but again I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention.
So, to recap, student Meyer rudely cuts in at the front of the line of people waiting to ask questions, he harangues Kerry endlessly and monopolizes the question time until his mic is finally and mercifully cut off, at which point he refuses to leave and subsequently resists arrest.
There may be cases of police over-reaction and excessive force that are worth protesting but, really, this is so not one of them. Sometimes, 50,000 volts is exactly the right response.
A SHORT FOLLOWUP: All right, I've watched the YouTube clip of the incident here and, frankly, I have no sympathy for Mr. Meyer, who spent that entire time being a total dickhead. Does that mean he deserved getting Tasered? Possibly not but, under the circumstances, I'm simply not going to let him become a poster boy for the unfairness of excessive force.
There's an old saying: Pick your battles. And if this battle involves defending Andrew Meyer, I am just not interested in enlisting for that one.
HEH. What TBogg said.
16 comments:
I disagree.
As much as I hate (and cannot fathom) people who make speeches rather than ask a question of the person everyone paid to see, ... I'm pretty sure that it was possible to remove someone from the premises in the days before tasers were invented.
We should have historians find out just how they were able to achieve this feat.
Also, I watched a bit of a jumpy video, and I wish the asshole could have shut-up and let Kerry try to explain why he folded like a cheap suit amidst those unprecdented exit-poll discrepancies, the partisan rationing of voting machines, and the quite dubious performance of those Diebold machines.
But CC, that AP report is not an accurate account of what happened. From what I can see and hear in the video, the kid's mic is NEVER cut off. He finishes asking his question, Kerry starts to answer it, and all of a sudden the cops start to drag the kid away. It's at THAT point that the kid gets upset.
Just to be clear (and to cover my ass here), what I've written is based solely on Meyer's behaviour as it's been described in the mainstream press.
If, however, that information isn't accurate, then it goes without saying that I'll rescind my statement. I guess I better go find me some YouTube.
I think this proves once more just how lousy and spineless John Kerry is. He could have been more assertive and insist on being given the right to start answering those questions (which were pretty good ones, I'd say). But he just stood there and let the Sicherheitsdienst make the situation worse.
I've seen most of the videos out there and I'm still saying the kid deserved what he got. He was an instigator trying to disrupt the proceedings.
Should he have been tasered? Well, he's the one who escalated it to that point--watch his passive/aggressive walk and wrestling down the aisle--one minute going with the cops, the next pushing them away and trying to get away.
Could the cops have handled it differently? Probably, but I don't like 'arm-chair quarterbacking' after the fact--I wasn't there but what I saw was this very threatening man who just wouldn't stop being a jackass.
Anyone with a brain and a good knowledge of joint locks could have handled it better.
Step 1: Police stand on either side and take his arms.
Step 2: Police officer grasps 2 of his fingers and bend them back to the pain/break threshold (never break the fingers, the person goes into shock and the hold is less effective).
Step 3: Detained individual is escorted from the premises. And if you don't believe me, go find a good martial artist and say "I bet you 5 bucks a finger lock can't make me go where you direct me."
There are other,less pleasant options that are still less extreme than a taser.
Of course, a better plan of action would have been to let Kerry answer, then remove the heckler if he didn't go himself. But that would require thinking.
Give someone a toy and authority to use it, they will.
chet:
Meyer's mic was most definitely cut off in the middle of his long-winded rant, after which he refused to go quietly.
Sorry, but no sympathy here.
Hm. I hadn't seen that particular video before. I guess his mic did get cut after all. My bad. I still don't think the police handled it well, though.
I think there were a number of ways that could have gone down, but Mr. Meyer seemed to be making a concerted effort to make sure it ended as badly as possible. And there's one more point that's worth making.
Quite frankly, Meyer's behaviour just plain scared me. He was clearly angry, and abusive to other people who were waiting patiently to ask questions.
Under those circumstances, how can you know if someone like that isn't a nut case with a gun? In these delicate times, I think rule number one is: Don't make any sudden, sweeping arm gestures. Because, if you do, bad things are bound to happen.
And they did.
This came up yesterday at our place. One member was totally outraged, and the rest of us are thinking that although the taser was over the top, that guy was wanting to cause a kerfuffle. I doubt he expected to be tased, but he wanted to be seen and heard.
He was after an arrest, rather than a removal.
Purity trolls are on it though, telling how AWFUL it is that we havent jumped on that particular bandwagon.
There are so many daily outrages, focus is needed.
It was all a show put on my Meyers. I've seen it from five different angles now and have posted all the ones i found to my blog. I supported the little shit at first. But subsequent testimony by the chick he had filming him and the police report ( also on my blog ) indicate that he was punching and kicking at the officers.
So in short, he deserved what he got. This wasn't a case of censorship or first amendment rights as I first though. This is a case of a young punk who wanted to get his face on camera and decided it would be fun to assault police officers.
Having cops involved in this at all is completely over the top. If there were not cops in force in the room, other people would have almost certainly gotten up and made the guy shut up or leave. That's what generally happens in these forums when someone starts pulling crap link that. The presence of police changes the entire dynamic of the situation, since very few people will get up and confront someone with the police right there.
Was it a stunt? Probably. If the stunt was to show how pathetic, dangerous and reactionary police forces can be, then success! He doesn't have to be sympathetic to acknowledge the police are in the wrong here.
There were three or four cops there, basically on top of him. How goddamned incompetent are the police forces if they can't remove one guy from a room without resorted to a taser? Tasers, for those who may not know or may have forgotten, are sometimes deadly. Lethal. They have killed healthy adults before, and they probably will again. They are supposed to a replacement for shooting someone, with a much lower risk of death. They are not a replacement for proper restraint and police procedures. Tasers are not supposed to be used because otherwise police might get bruised or slightly injured. Again, if four cops can't stop one guy (regular sized) who they have pinned to the ground from punching and kicking them, they are incompetent.
As others have said in many places already : being an asshole and cutting in line isn't sufficient cause for what happened to him.
CC You're totally out of line on this one if you're being serious. That there were police hovering over Andrew (even if he barged ahead in line) is indicative of fascism, and indeed their reaction to his emphatic questions confirm that diagnosis.
he deserved to have his mic cut. he deserved to be removed from the room. he deserved to be arrested. but tasers are for potentially dangerous perps, not obnoxious fuckheads.
there is a mitigating circumstance in the officers' favor, however, and that's the fact that a us senator was in the immediately vicinity.
my advice to meyer: in the future, obey the law.
KEvron
well, now, wait a minute:
the video has a black out just prior to the officers' application of the taser. was it taser gun, or a drive stunner? the former incapacitates its victim, while the latter simply causes pain without incapacitating. drive stunners are meant for the very situation we saw in the video: a suspect who refuses to be detained.
KEvron
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