What I don't understand is why they don't ask students to show their school ID -before- they go into the library. If security is the reason for the random checks, isn't it a lot more secure to make students show their ID before they get inside? In that case, someone like this dude who was carrying on about the Patriot Act or "trying to make himself seem like an oppressed minority" would have no case at all if it wasn't a 'random' check and was instead a check that all students had to perform before gaining access to the library.

Personally, I'm inclined to believe that the student in question (who really was a student of the university campus he was on) was in the library trying to work on some assignment or another. Maybe the reason for his reaction was that he felt targeted by the 'random check' of student ID they were performing in the library.

If he felt slighted by having been asked to show ID and thought he was being targeted and put up a fight, as it's evident he had done, then arrest him for failure to comply or whatever the term is. Handcuff him and arrest him and remove him from the premises. Why is violence at all neccessary in this situation? Okay, we've made the point about how it's hard to make people physically move when they don't want to, which warrented the first zap from the taser. When he was on the ground and unable to stand up, why did they zap him again? I thought the point of tasers were to incapacitate people who pose some kind of threat.

Watching the video a couple times over, I see that the cops do end up lifting him by the arm and dragging him out of the library, and out of the hall. If the end result is having to carry him anyway, why is the repeated zapping required? I also find it weird that the campus police ignored the student requests for their identification and badge numbers, etc, and supposedly went so far as to threaten to taser students who asked them for that information. (Daily Bruin Article)

I think it was Malacasta who raised the question about why none of the students did anything when this was happening, but what could they have been expected to do? Police are the good guys, you're supposed to trust that they're doing the right thing.

My objection to this incident is that the violence did not at all seem proportionate to the scenario in question.