This is the United States of America.

UCLA. A kid goes into a library. He doesn’t have ID. They ask him to leave. And he starts to. But he’s not fast enough. And the campus police Taser him not once, but multiple times. All the while, the kid screams, “Don’t touch me!” The kid shrieks that he has a medical condition. But these cops don’t care. And when he’s frightened and screaming in pain, trying to explain that he was minding his own business, the police still demand that he stand up. And they Taser him again. Torturing him with total equanimity. Telling him to stand up.

The horror finally kicks in around the students and a few of them are brave enough to ask for badge numbers. The officers refuse.

The kid’s dragged out into the vestibule. He begs with the officers, “Please! Please!” But they insist that he stand up. One cop has the temerity to declare the kid “mentally ill,” perhaps communicating to the considerable crowd of onlookers that the police is in the right. Mind your own business. Go study some more and be good consumers.

Finally, the kid is dragged out of the library. The students look around, slackjawed, shocked that this can happen in a library. They only came here to study.

The UCPD owes us an explanation. UCLA Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams owes us an explanation. UC President Robert Dynes owes us an explanation. The police who were involved in this torture of a harmless student need to be shitcanned on the spot.

If you found this video as disgusting as I did, then you need to let the UCPD know how you feel.

Here’s the contact info:

University of California, Los Angeles
Police Department
601 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1364
Telephone: (310) 825-1491

A man named Karl T. Ross is the UCLA Chief of Police. Direct your mail and your phone calls to him.

Here is some more contact info:

Karl T. Ross, Chief of Police
kross@ucpd.ucla.edu
310-825-1633

John Adams, Captain
adamsj@ucpd.ucla.edu
310-825-4406

Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams
Telephone: 310-825-2151
Fax: 310-206-6030
chancellor@conet.ucla.edu

I will be calling them tomorrow myself, demanding answers.

[UPDATE: The police statement: “The officers deemed it necessary to use the Taser in a ‘drive stun’ capacity.” And here’s the LA Times’ report.]

Sister Rye points to this remarkable overstepping of authority. At UCLA, a student who was using a computer in the library was asked to leave. While he was in the act of leaving the library, the police then grabbed his arm and the student asked the police to let him go. He then began to scream, “Get off me!” This (and perhaps the student’s profanity) resulted in the student being Tasered several times by the campus police.

What’s more, these UCPD officers threatened to Taser another student when she asked the officer for his name and badge number.

It’s terrible that thuggish behavior like this would happen in a library, a sanctuary intended for anyone to pursue the humanities without violence. And based on my own experience with violent police officers, it’s even more terrible that these cops will likely get off without so much as a slap on the wrist.

Perhaps the only solution is to lobby the newly Democratic Senate and House of Representatives to consider legislation that would permit nationwide accountability for this type of excessive force. If the police know they can get away with this, they will continue to engage in this kind of behavior.

[UPDATE: Video. This is utterly disgusting.]