Student Tasered for Asking a Question
ABC News has a disturbing story about a student who was tasered and then arrested "after loudly and repeatedly trying to ask U.S. Sen. John Kerry questions during a campus forum." Videos, available on YouTube, show police pulling the student away from the microphone and then tasering him:
University spokesman Steve Orlando said Meyer was asked to leave the microphone after his allotted time was up. Meyer can be seen refusing to walk away and getting upset that the microphone was cut off.However, Kerry apparently was saying during all this that he considered the question important and that he would answer the student. And, according to another ABC report, Kerry condemned the arrest. Has the taser now become a form of political speech at universities?
posted by Erik Sherman @ 5:10 AM
2 Comments:
At 10:50 AM,
JohnInFlorida said…
This is a joke, right? First of all Kerry was not in a position of authority at the event, he was a guest. The moderator asked to have the punk removed when he crossed the line of acceptable behaviour. You failed to mention that the little trouble maker was not invited (yes, it was invitation only), that he planned to disrupt the event, that he expected a response from police (he said so to the person he asked to record the whole thing), that he butted in line, that he spoke over an invited student, and that his questions were more of a far leftist political statement than an actual inquiry. It was not up to Kerry to forgive this nut job. The moderator and police had a responsibility to protect Kerry and other students from a situation that could have spun out of control or been a distraction for some type of real crime to be committed. Nobody's rights were violated except the right of the other students to ask real questions of a national figure without incident.
Should the taser have been used? That's a judgement call. The police gave this clown several warnings and, say what you will, the brief use of that taser settled the moron down and allowed the event to close peaceably.
At 3:24 AM,
Erik Sherman said…
IF you're going to be sarcastic, then you might have a better argument prepared. No, not a joke. Was Kerry in authority? Only so much as he was the invited speaker, and, typically, speakers get a big say in how to handle hecklers. It doesn't matter whether the student was invited or not, or even whether he butted in line, spoke over someone else, or wanted to make a statement. (And I'd wonder if your attitude would be different if the speaker wasn't "leftist.")
You want to excuse the choices made by the university and the police. But their choices were poor, and the evidence is the result: the tremendous amount of bad press and a public black eye for the school and the police. You say that use of the taser was a "judgment call." Yup - a really stupid one. The action magnified the situation and turned it into a national story. If you don't like what someone says and use physical force not to hear it, then you're pretty far down a legal, ethical, moral, and pragmatic rat hole.
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