At about 11:30pm on Tuesday, November 14th, UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad was repeatedly tasered by several UCPD officers, even after handcuffing. His crime? Not showing a UCLA student ID and not leaving the library fast enough after this failure.

Here's the YouTube video. Be warned: the video is not graphic, but is highly disturbing if you value your freedom and have a healthy disrespect for inappropriate use of authority. Please watch it, then act.

Some things to consider:

1) Tabatabainejad did not attack the officers, other than to raise his voice after they laid hands on him. This is verified by the many, many witnesses in the video, and by the video itself for at least part of the incident's duration.

2) Tabatabainejad was repeatedly tasered, being told to "stand up" after each to avoid more tasering. After multiple taserings, I don't think many of us would be standing very well. In the video, you can see the officers almost lifting him to his feet. Why did they not simply drag him away at that point?

3) These officers created this situation amidst a large body of UCLA students. Students who demanded their badge numbers or questioned their actions were also threatened with tasering. This can be clearly seen and heard in the video. Should some of these students have taken action against these officers, a bad situation could have turned into total tragedy. I expect more of my public servants in handling a situation like this than to whip out tasers and threaten citizens exercising their rights. I expect them not to create situations like this to begin with.

4) For those of you who think that Tabatabainejad may have had it coming: we can't know the totality of the situation from the video alone, although the evidence in the video is fairly damning to the officers, and witness reports say he never threatened anyone. One thing we can see and know is this: Tabatabainejad was no longer any threat to the officers, even if he may have been at the beginning of the encounter. Multiple taserings, especially after handcuffing, were not warranted. If he ever needed to be at all, the student was at this point fully subdued. Even if he had been warned multiple times and was a repeat offender, nothing warranted the treatment he received.

5) I'm going to point out what should be obvious at this point: Mostafa Tabatabainejad is likely of Middle Eastern ancestry.

Assuming he was not racially profiled by xenophobic cops, this student was theoretically tasered repeatedly for failure to show identification and leave a public college library swiftly enough. What if he was only cramming for an exam? What if he didn't think it was that big of a problem to stretch the rule on ID and library time? What if he was just an unruly kid with a chip on his shoulder who made the mistake of verbally bucking authority with cops who should never have been allowed into the UCPD?

This could have been your mother or father, your son or daughter, your brother or sister, your best friend or lover, or me... or you.

This is not what we pay these people to do. They only get away with actions like these when too few of us speak up and hold them accountable.

Please use the contact information below and make your voice heard:

UCPD Chief of Police, Karl T. Ross (310) 825-1633 kross@ucpd.ucla.edu
UCPD Captain, John Adams (310) 825-4406 adamsj@ucpd.ucla.edu
UCLA Campus Police (310) 825-1491
Mr. Naples, Dean of Students (310) 825-3871

UCLA has pulled the Dean of Students' contact page and is bouncing emails to Naples, but you can find contact information for the specific Deans of the UCLA campus colleges, who can bring pressure on the Dean of Students and the larger school administration. For starters, here's the email address of the Dean's Office in UCLA's Law School: studentaffairs@law.ucla.edu

Thanks to grindingbassline for distributing the above contact info.