Reply #127: You couldn't have been Tasered because the technology didn't exist.

[pnwmom]

This is clearly a case of "boys with toys." Before Tasers, what would the campus cops have done? They would have done what they finally did at the end, anyway. Two of them grabbed him under the arms and carried him out. Simple. That's what should have happened in the first place.

Don't you see? The technology available is what is driving the cops' behavior -- and even your reaction. The cops always had a simple choice that would have much more quickly gotten the job done. But they chose to use their weapons instead -- because they could. Because they had them in their hot little hands. (And maybe because they had recently been to a ceremony where other cops were awarded Taser Medals from the Taser Corp. for using them.)

And why do you say it is BS that this student felt picked on because of his appearance? The Daily Bruin says that it was a "random check." What makes you so sure it was random and not racial profiling? The student's attorney says that the white males in the area were NOT similarly asked to produce their ID. How do you know that this student didn't have good reason to feel that he was selected solely because of his Middle Eastern appearance?

And if the cops really cared about whether he was a student or not, why didn't they just look inside his backpack -- which was full of other things that would have identified him as a student?

I don't know where you went to college, but just so you know -- this library is open to the public. Only after 11 p.m. do they try to limit it to University people. But there is nothing in the written library policy that actually requires anyone, ever, to have an ID in order to use the facility.