Don't Tase Me, Bro!

The problem with real life is that it doesn't make for a very good story. Take the recent case of the young man who was tasered at the University of Florida.

If that were fiction, it would be a simple yet captivating story, with police brutality, uncaring politicians and lots of scope for moral outrage. A college student was asking a politician some tough questions. "They" (whoever they are) wanted to muzzle him, and had him dragged away. He bravely stood up to them, refused to go quietly and so, the police - in an unparalleled example of abuse of power - tasered him.

Of course, real life is not fiction. It doesn't tie up quite so neatly. First, it was apparent even from the video that the student was a borderline nutcase. He was suggesting that Kerry threw the 2004 elections because of some massive Skull & Bones (a Yale student club) conspiracy. The audience seemed clearly irritated with his comments and he wasn't really asking questions. It also seemed like he had made a scene to get to ask the question in the first place.

Ok, so he's a jerk, but we don't taser people for being annoying (though we should!)

Then it turned out that he asked a friend to videotape him going up. oh well, so he was videotaping the whole speech anyway, of course he wanted to videotape his own q&a session.

The police claimed he was just publicity hungry and started hamming for the cameras whenever the cameramen showed up. Hmm, have to say - he was yelling just a little too loudly. And made some fairly ridiculous remarks about being sent away to be killed by the government. On the other hand, he apparently believes the 2004 election was fixed by the Skull & Bones society - so maybe he was sincere when he feared for his life.

Still, all this injects that enemy of righteous moral outrage - the reasonable doubt. So I put aside my moral outrage for a few minutes and considered all sides. The conclusion? Maybe he was a publicity hungry kid. And maybe he's secretly thrilled with his overnight celebrity status - maybe he even anticipated it during that painful tasering moment.
Doesn't change a thing. He was being midly irritating, but perfectly orderly while asking his question. Kerry started replying to the question, so there was no need to drag him away. Of course he was shocked at being dragged away from the mike by four cops, anyone would have been. He shouldn't have tried to fight off the cops, but at no point did the situation get out of the cops control. Yet, they made a coldblooded, calculated decision that they needed to subdue him. Instead of taking him out of the room and letting him go, they wrestled him down, pinned him to the ground, and tased him into submission.

*That* was the ultimate problem - the police used force, not to stop him from harming anyone, but to subdue him. At no point did he do anything that could be remotely construed as threatening, to the audience, to the speaker or to the police. The police just decided to hurt him, before he could come up with the idea of hurting anyone.

It was a preemptive strike. Seems like there's a lot of that going around!