Surprisingly, I am going to have to tentatively go with NJ on this one.
The instances that would change my mind are the specifics about if they restrained him after he finally agreed to leave and the circumstances of the additional tasering once he was on the floor. But with the absence of that information, it is the student that was in the wrong.
The officer threatening the other students with the taser was wrong but I don't know if I would have done any different in a situation where a bunch of other people were crowding around with the potential to cause more violence. I may have threatened use of the taser without any intent to use it just to halt any thought of escalation by the onlookers. It was probably a pretty fearful situation for the officers too but the one issuing the threats should get a reprimand.
The other thing I would like to point out is simply that if this same situation happened at a gas station or a grocery store it probably would not have caused the outcry that it did. If there was any news at all, it would be some 30 second spot on the local news and that would be the end of it. There environment of a college campus is seen as a more 'civilized' place where things that might occur out in the 'real world' simply do not occur there.
I have seen and heard of two circumstances of protests on campus one involving proper police intervention and one not. In one case the students were protesting the war on a grassy hill. The cops were out on the street watching them to make sure it was a peaceful protest. When a protester stepped out onto the street, they were arrested immediately since it is illegal to protest on the street. The was appropriate action.
In the other scenario, the students were protesting properly but time for some reason the police took aggressive action against the protesters. While simply standing there, a friend of mine was shot with a sandbag, maced, and intentionally rammed by a mounted officer. There was an incident of a man being shot by a sandbag while carrying his daughter on his shoulders. Luckily another protester caught the girl. This kind of action was egregious yet due to the climate at the time, the start of the Iraq war, nothing was done.
Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)
™ Version 4.2
