danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Yesterday morning the weather was a bit threatening, and it was already raining lightly around eleven o’clock when I would have needed to be on my bike riding to campus in order to attend the speech by John Kerry.  So, regretfully, I didn’t go.  Come to find out, some punk got tasered by University Police.

Now, this doesn’t surprise me for several reasons.  First, UPD are kind of jerky.  I am as law abiding as they come, but I am on campus every day, and have been for the last seven years, so in that time I have, of course, had occasion to interact with UPD, and the exchanges have not always been friendly.  There is one nice motorcycle officer who pulled me over once for a broken tail light–he just gave me a warning–and I see him directing traffic each day, and he does a fine job.  But there is another guy who is a total jerk, and I see him sometimes directing traffic very poorly.  Second, this tasered student is a known troublemaker.  And, while it is disturbing that he was tasered when he was, from what I hear, already handcuffed, at least partially, every protester should know that you don’t resist arrest.  That’s a basic tenet of non-violent civil disobedience.  And don’t be so obnoxious in a public forum.

That said, I do think that police have a tendency to resort to tasers in incidents that might call for less force.  This guy obviously did not pose a serious danger to anyone, and there is no reason that two officers could not have subdued him without tasering.

From what I have read, John Kerry has stated now that he had no problem answering this kid’s question, even though the announced last question had already been asked.  But I also read what the kid wanted to ask, and he sounds like a huge wanker just trying to give Kerry a hard time.  I’m just glad he wasn’t a Republican.  Can you imagine the uproar his tasering would have caused then?  Every right-wing blogger and radio host would have turned it into the scandal of the century.

Filed under: Current Events, Gainesville, Politics on September 18th, 2007