The Senator, The Guy, And The Cops With Tasers
Posted by Phoenix Woman on September 18, 2007
Now that everyone’s had their Ten Minutes Hate or however long they’ve been hating on John Kerry for failing to be a mindreader last night and stopping the cops from using a taser on a guy who crashed his Q&A session, I thought I’d share this with you.
“I was at the Kerry speech today, sitting 2 rows away from all the action. I’ll let you know how it really went down.
The forum was going to be over at 2 pm, and Kerry spoke for so long that the Q and A portion had to be shortened. He only got through about 7 of the 50 people who were waiting to ask questions. While the final question was being read, some douchebag ran down the aisle, grabbed the mic from the other side of the room, interrupted the kid who was talking, and started yelling at Kerry, demanding that his questions be heard. He started ranting about how Kerry talks in circles or something, and everyone was getting annoyed. The cops are all over him in no time and try to escort him out, but he starts yelling and resisting. Kerry insists that they let him stay and even agrees to answer his question.
After the interrupted guy’s question was answered, Kerry keeps his promise and lets the angry guy talk. This is the point where people started taking their cameras and phones out. All the videos floating around youtube start around here. You can see in the videos that his questioning gets kind of inappropriate, so somebody cut his mic. Instead of shutting up, he starts yelling and making an even bigger scene. He struggled all the way up the aisle, and started violently trying to free himself. They threatened to taze him and he wouldnt stop fighting, so he got tazed. They only had to arrest him because he was causing a disruption and wouldn’t leave peacefully. He wasn’t being silenced for asking tough questions, trust me.
It’s a shame that they had to taze the guy, but he had a chance to calm down and didn’t take it. He probably didn’t pose a physical threat to anybody in the room, but someone can’t just hijack the floor of a forum like that and expect not to get kicked out. This wasn’t some poor guy who was brutalized for trying to ask some tough questions. He’s just an obnoxious guy who had a fit when there wasn’t time for his questions and refused to be calm even when he was given the chance to speak. He was looking for trouble, and everyone applauded when he was forced to leave.
Nothing pisses me off more than hearing stories about power tripping cops abusing their power, unnecessarily tazing or arresting people, etc. It’s a huge problem and I’m glad it’s being discussed. Just don’t mistake this for one of those cases”
UPDATE: Will Bunch has more on Andrew Meyer, the guy in question. Turns out he’s known for this sort of thing.
UPDATE #2: So does the Naples News:
GAINESVILLE — Hordes of Internet and TV viewers have seen police Tasering a college student who was either passionately questioning Sen. John Kerry or staging his most popular video stunt yet.
At a University of Florida forum Monday, Andrew Meyer loudly peppered Kerry with questions about impeaching President Bush, why he didn’t challenge the 2004 election results and whether he and Bush were members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University.
Police tried to escort him out after he went over his time, and shocked the student after he resisted and yelled, “Don’t Tase me, bro!”
“What did I do?” he screamed as he was led from the room.
An officer, however, alleged in a police report that Meyer’s “demeanor completely changed once the cameras were not in sight” and that he was “laughing” and “lighthearted” on the way to jail.
13 Responses to “The Senator, The Guy, And The Cops With Tasers”
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Charles said
I disagree.
Tasers can, sometimes, cause death. While that’s unusual, they always cause considerable anguish. Their use is justifiable IMO only in cases of clear self defense.
I think we all need to adapt to the concept that there are a–holes in the world. This guy sounds like one of them. As far as I can tell, he committed no crime and the cops did not arrest him [edited: that is, prior to seizing him]. Therefore, there was no legal basis to Taser him.
As for John Kerry, as much as I sympathize with the awkward position, people who run for the presidency have to deal with a lot worse. The least he could have done was go bail for the kid.
As Avedon said, “It’s annoying, but not yet illegal, to be obnoxious.
He was, after all, just asking a few questions.”
______________
Added:
AIUSA:
For those departments who continue to deploy tasers, Amnesty International has called for their use to be strictly limited to situations where there is an immediate threat of death or serious injury, which cannot be contained by lesser means, and where a police officer would otherwise resort to firearms to protect life. …More than 150 people in the USA have now died after being struck by tasers since June 2001, 61 in 2005 alone.
A summary of some of the issues by CrunchGear, with company response.
You can read the Taser company’s response to criticisms here
fruitfly said
Randi Rhodes spent about 90% of her entire show ranting about this topic.
Rhodes gets a bit annoying at times, but nothing was stopping her on this issue.
…just buzzing around… ;-D
Buck Naked Politics said
My fellow blogger (and Gainesville resident) was also at the forum and blogged about it here. She doesn’t argue that the kid should have been “tased,” but she does think that he was disruptive.
Phoenix Woman said
Randi Rhodes was so intent on fanning the Kerry-hate flames that she talked over anyone who dared bring up information showing Kerry in anything but the demonic light she wanted to cast over him.
Charles and Buck: If you read what the witness stated, you’ll see that the person who made the comment I quoted above didn’t exactly approve of tasering the guy — in fact, nobody I know of actually approved of tasering the guy — but neither would he/she go out and blame Kerry for it. But if you go into Randi Rhodes’ domain and DU and DailyKos, you’ll find thousand-comment diaries on That Evil Bastard Kerry, as if he’d been the cop who did it.
Another thing: Apparently, the guy had been spotted outside the hall beforehand, rushing to get in, saying things like “I’m going to get thrown out” over and over again. If true, that’s not the action of somebody who just wanted a few questions answered, but someone who wanted to be arrested so he could have his fifteen nanoseconds of fame. Well, he got his wish.
Yet another thing: How many of the people who are now condemning this would cheer if the guy was a Swift Boat wingnut who’d deprived other people of their chance to speak just so he could spout gibberish at length?
Phoenix Woman said
And here’s Kerry’s response, as delivered by his spokesperson on DailyKos.
Go over and tell him how evil he for trusting law enforcement personnel to do their jobs properly.
MEC said
Judging by what I read, it was entirely justifiable to haul the disrupter’s ass out of there. His behavior was disorderly conduct.
I disapprove of using tasers. They’re too often used without justification, and they can do serious physical damage. But the use of tasers is a separate issue from whether the guy should have been allowed to continue causing a scene.
Charles said
Well, I haven’t attacked Kerry, PW, and if Randi Rhodes did it, she’s just silly. Talking over people she disagrees with is, however, her normal style. That’s a reason I don’t listen much to her.
The worst I have to say about Kerry is that he came across looking weak and ineffectual in the face of improper force. Granting that he couldn’t actually do much to stop the tasering, he could have made some gesture to the kid, like paying his bail or spending 15 minutes down at the precinct with him to answer his question. If he was on a tight timeline, then send an aide or give the kid a plane ticket to Washington to talk to him. Anything to demonstrate that he took the guy seriously and was not in on it with the cops.
whig said
There was no call for tasers to be used. They were just trying to end the “scene” he was making. Well, it ended up making the scene bigger, as usual.
Mal-y Mal said
Andrew Meyer is an ass, should’ve been tased. Perhaps removed earlier.
Also, how about giving an award to the Cop who protected EVERYONE ELSE’s Right to Free Speech? Screw Andrew Meyer – he’s a disruptive hack…
Charles said
And there’s the rub.
When the force of the law is applied to injure the people we don’t like, it ceases to be law.
What would we be saying if, by chance, Meyer had died as a result of being Tasered?
MEC said
There are two issues here.
1. Tasers. They should not be routinely used for law enforcement. They’re too often used on people who weren’t breaking the law, and they have caused serious harm even when used “correctly”.
2. Meyer’s behavior. It met the definition for “disorderly conduct”, and there is strong evidence that he went into the meeting with plans to disrupt it in order to get attention. There were ample grounds to arrest him.
I’m automatically suspicious of police accounts of the behavior of people they arrest — it’s human nature to justify one’s own actions — but the accounts of other witnesses than the police support the police report that Meyer was being disruptive enough to justify trying to remove him from the meeting, and that he resisted removal violently enough to justify subduing and arresting him.
Tasering was the wrong way to subdue Meyer, but Meyer is no innocent victim and he’s no martyr for free speech. He’s just an asshole whose antisocial tendencies caught up with him.
Buck Naked Politics said
In my comment (#3), I didn’t mean to imply that the original witness cited in the post had supported tasering. I was simply trying to share my co-blogger’s account of the event, which compares Meyer to her children (back when they were young and played “little Napoleon” during tantrums). ‘Sorry about the misunderstanding.
Charles said
Yes, MEC, it’s the use of the Taser that bothers me the most. But here’s a comment from Daily Kos, via Avedon, that bears on this:
Naturally, I don’t know for sure if the poster is a former Federal law enforcement officer. But this is the kind of sentiment I would like to believe exists among law enforcement officers.
In the film, I didn’t see/hear the officer say, “You are under arrest for X” or “If you don’t leave now, I will place you under arrest” or any of the things that would make tackling the guy legal. Without looking at Florida’s statute, I don’t know if Meyer’s behavior meets the standard of disorderly conduct. As we saw with the Larry Craig episode, the wording of state statutes makes a difference.
A policeman approached Meyer briefly, but then went away. Then they shut down the mic and grabbed the guy.
I have a lot of sympathy for cops, who have to make difficult judgments under murky circumstances. I agree that it looks as if Meyer is trying to provoke an incident. The argument that Kerry is a US Senator deserving special protection is valid– or would be if there were any evidence whatsoever that Meyer posed a physical threat.
The law has very specific threshholds, rules, and procedures. I can’t be sure, because the film does not permit absolute certainty as to what was said, but based on what I see, I agree with Yucatan Man that this looks like a completely unprofessional arrest.
Added: This film (second on the page)shows the officers told the man– after they had Tasered him– that he was being arrested for inciting a riot. That, and the Brooklyn Bridge, will buy you a cup of coffee.