[My initial reaction to the UCLA taser incident. I wrote this a few days late and had the feeling that I had missed the best window for posting it. I made a Google alert on the incident and starting keeping a watch of when it would be a good time to return to this.]
Last week's incident of a non-violent student being tasered five times in UCLA's Powell Library reminds me that sometimes terrible things can happen in libraries. It is unnerving to see a place which looks like my workplace be involved in a blatant human rights violation.
Indulge this lapse into idealistic first principles. Libraries are places of learning, where we believe that the pen is mightier than the sword, that ideas captured in the written word can change the world. When the rule of law is disregarded by those entrusted to enforce, it is always alarming. When this happens in a library, it seems like a desecration
... [stuff used in my exploded library post, wondering about the lack of outrage from librarian bloggers]
It's not much consolation that this incident could not have happened in the library where I work. We don't have the ID checks which precipitated this incident. The security needs in my library are totally different, considering that it is a small post-graduate library which is in an out of the way location. We don't have extended opening hours and we know most of our users individually, whether by face or name. Also, tasers are only used on a limited trial basis in the state of New South Wales where I live. Tasers are only meant for situations dealing with the most violent & erratic people, hardly the condition of Mostafa Tabatabainejad, the student who was tasered. I am glad to be living in a place which does not aspire to be an early adopter when it comes to weapons technology.
I would like to look at 3 issues here. The role of library policies in triggering this incident. The UCPD policy authorizing the tasing of people engaged in passive resistance. The threats made by police to students protesting the police actions.
1. What role, if any, did the library have in the creation of these policies? ... [see the main post for what I wrote here]
2. The key issue, the use of tasers against passive resistance. Many people have blamed Tabatabainejad's belligerence for causing a routine procedure to escalate into this incident. I say that his bad conduct pales into insignificance when compared with the real culprit, the UCPD policy on the usage of tasers [link to pdf]. One could argue that the police didn't abuse their discretion, they were simply following this taser policy. The results are inhumane and monstrous because the policy is inhumane and monstrous. Previously the police would not have shot or beaten somebody providing only passive resistance, clearly not a threat to officer, himself or anybody else. Now tasers have been invented and it's ok to inflict severe physical pain on people using passive resistance. In other words, it is just fine to inflict severe pain to ensure obedience and compliance. The ways that such a power could be abused are staggering. Indeed one only need's to look at the police's threats to tase students protesting Tabatabainejad's fate as the first steps down this slippery slope.
3. This leads to the third travesty, that police threatened tasing and possibly assaulted (in the traditional legal sense, of actions causing another to think he or she is about to be subjected to physical violence) students who were asking for the badge numbers of police. It shows that the police believe that they were above the rule of law. I am certain that these police officers would have treated a librarian's protests with the same contempt as the treated the student protests, but it would have been good to have that caught on tape as well.
