Police tasered an unarmed student at least four times on Tuesday night inside the UCLA library.
23-year-old Mostafa Tabatabainejad did not have or was not showing his ID when he told the police, “Don’t touch me,” after they grabbed him on his way out with his backpack.
After they stunned him, he screamed and yelled, “Here’s your Patriot Act. Here’s your fucking abuse of power.”
A crowd of dazed and angry students demanded the officers’ names, with one saying, “You shocked him repeatedly. It’s a violation….” to which an officer warned, back off or “you’re gonna get tazed too.”
The hair-raising scene is the third LA police brutality case publicized on YouTube this month. The first showed an officer repeatedly punching a suspect in the face after a foot chase in Hollywood. The second showed an officer pepper-spraying a suspect who is handcuffed inside a cruiser.
After the second video surfaced, Councilman Bernard C. Parks, a former police chief, said that for over a year, the LAPD has ignored warnings of an “ongoing discipline problem” in the department. Of course, the LAPD likely isn’t fazed by the YouTube phenomenon; they’ve been starring in on-camera beatings for more than 15 years.
—April Rabkin
