Originally posted by Leshrak
Don't be a douchebag.

There's no reason to taser someone when they're not being violent. There's especially no reason to taser someone a second time for not standing up after they were already tasered. I doubt I'd be able to stand 30 seconds after being jolted with multiple thousands of watts of electricity.

What they should have done is placed him into handcuffs for not showing his student ID, read him his rights and carried him out/arrested him for tresspassing without showing the proper student ID.
Don't you be a douchebag. So you'd have preferred they take five officers, grab him from each limb, possibly having to -physically restrain- him (read: tie up or beat into submission) and drag him outside rather than having tasered him?

I'm not saying tasering isn't harsh - it is. It was, however, the LEAST long-term damaging manner by which a person can be forced into submission, short of, uh, blowdarts - and I'm pretty sure if they'd used tranquilizers, we'd be hearing about how the police poisoned some poor, innocent protester right now.

It's not as easy as "just escort him outside" when a person is intentionally trying to resist moving. Have you ever seen a child trying to resist going to bed, or, specifically, getting a shot? Let me reference a personal story as a little bit of an anecdotal analogy for how difficult it is to forcibly move someone WITHOUT either physical violence (nightsticks, clubs), mace, taser, or the threat of lethal force (which obviously would have been excessive here).

At the age of 8, I was afraid of needles. Not afraid of needles, deathly afraid of needles. You were not getting me near a needle voluntarily, ever, and I did not care what kind of scene I caused. The long story made short, it took my mother, my father, and my grandfather - three grown adults - to manage to pry me away from the floor, door, doorway, and every other solid object I could get any limb attached to. That was when I was an -eight year old child.- You really, honestly think one adult can't kick up a HELL of a lot stronger of resistance against a police officer or two? You think that wouldn't have risked damage to property, harm to the police, or harm to the suspect?

Tasering is somewhat painful, but the long-term risks are extraordinarily low, compared to the alternatives. This guy was intentionally resisting the orders of police officers who were reasonably executing a legitimately applied university rule, and resisted doing so MULTIPLE TIMES before the police even ARRIVED. I have no doubt in my mind that, if we had a picture of thirty minutes beforehand, this protester certainly would have amply demonstrated multiple refusals to cooperate civilly - leaving the only two options at "concede, because words aren't working" and "back words with action." To bastardize a saying, you can get a UCLA douchebag a lot farther out of your library with a kind word and a stun gun than just a kind word, apparently.