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UTC Flash Mob Mace'd and Taser'd. Sans warning.
SniperGuy
SniperGuyGamingRegistered User regular
SniperGuyGamingRegistered User regular
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtYqLPQcppE
This happened last night. The crowd got together for one of the extremely rare showings of school spirit. And it seems that at 3:23 a kid is tasered without warning, and the crowd is definitely maced without warning.
Sure, they shouldn't have been climbing on the building. That was retarded. But they weren't harming anyone. Was this warranted? It seems like a massive overreaction by the police. Hell, my dorm was on lockdown for a few hours, there were at least a hundred cops in the intersection outside.
So, discuss.
This happened last night. The crowd got together for one of the extremely rare showings of school spirit. And it seems that at 3:23 a kid is tasered without warning, and the crowd is definitely maced without warning.
Sure, they shouldn't have been climbing on the building. That was retarded. But they weren't harming anyone. Was this warranted? It seems like a massive overreaction by the police. Hell, my dorm was on lockdown for a few hours, there were at least a hundred cops in the intersection outside.
So, discuss.
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What building are they trying to storm, there?
Well I'd say they were hoping for some deaths due to trampling followed by a lawsuit directed at the police department and the school.
Security will continue to feel free to taser whoever the fuck they want regardless of the rights infringed.
That didn't look like a flash mob that just started dancing around and left, it looked like a real mob chanting for people to do stupid dangerous shit involving school property. The cops had no way of knowing what it would escalate to, but they did know that people were doing really fucking stupid things.
From this camera's POV, we don't know if the cops said anything or did anything before coming out with the pepper spray.
Tazing a random dude is wrong, but we also couldn't see what the guy was doing before he got tazed. Was he trying to climb the building, the cop was pulling him down, and he flailed and "attacked" the cop? You don't need to be warned before you're about to be tazed. Fuck if we know.
I am not at all surprised that mace was brought out. If a crowd gathered outside my building chanting 'let us in' and climbing on the side of the building, I'd call the police and want them dispersed too.
And I still don't get WHY they were there, and wanted in. It clearly wasn't just to gather and have fun, or they wouldn't have wanted in so bad.
Other videos are up closer to the door, there is no warning before mace starts getting sprayed. They weren't chanting for anyone to do anything stupid. Yes, the climbing people were dumb.
Spraying a crowd with mace to incite a riot? Dumber. They could have easily just walked out and asked them not to climb up and they wouldn't have climbed anymore. Instead, the police used brute force.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPmqgGTdzm0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruEMaDZWRcs
Yes. It was for fun. Much like these other videos, of other students, on other campuses.
The cops were stupid to start macing that crowd.
There is plenty of stupid to go around... and neither side taking responsibility for their stupid adds in geometric stupid.
But then they got locked out, before they could get the group inside.
I don't know how well it was handled, but I think there's a lot of stupidity on both sides. The people who organize these "flash mobs" don't understand or think about how easily they could go wrong and the police are far too eager to use tazers and mace without thinking about is this excessive force and do we really want a confined group of students to suddenly start stampeding?
I don't doubt that the cops overreacted, but that video isn't enough to convince me of anything.
Hell, watching sports in high definition with fantastic camera angles, there have been many times when I've seen a play from a few angles and been sure of what happened. Then the guys in the truck find one more angle and it turns out I'm wrong. Video this bad can clear up outright lies *cough* Vancouver airport *cough*, but it's not even close to showing what really took place.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
That part is blatantly untrue. Not a single person there was asked to leave. If you'll notice in the video I posted a mere few seconds after the door opens mace gets sprayed.
As the inside of the library was, should they have let them in.
It was the school library.
And yeah looks there is more to the story than kids just want to have fun.
No, the inside of the library is inside of a building. It's also a fucking library.
Unfortunately the video doesn't start at the very beginning so without total confirmation I wouldn't be willing to label anything untrue. Especially since some of the reports seem to be coming from students there and not police.
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Man, I must have missed when this national taser pitch was made, since I don't remember anything of the sort. I've always heard it explained as an option to help subdue people. It isn't as though those good old fashioned physical restraint techniques that people always seem to trot out as an alternative to tasering haven't produced fatalities. But then again, they aren't OMG ELECTRICITY.
You have absolutely no way of telling this from that video. There are obviously some police outside the doors before the macing starts, otherwise that one kid couldn't have gotten tasered. I wouldn't be surprised if they did try to disperse people, but no one beyond the first row of people could hear them due to the shouting, and then couldn't move because of the crowd.
Basically, while I don't really praise the police for doing this, neither do I condemn them. I think there were probably better avenues, but this method dispersed the crowd quickly, with a minimum of harm and property damage.
t Sniperguy - can I send a flash mob to your house to have a rave? At 3 am tonight? Gathering and dancing is not something that's acceptable everywhere at all times. And even then, what they were doing was not gathering and dancing.
I agree, I still think cops should have tasers, they just need to force cops to write a justification for any use of their tazer the same as for discharging firearms, if the justification isn't satisfactory disciplinary action is in order.
This idea is idiotic. A taser discharge isn't even in the same ballpark as a firearm discharge. One is designed to incpacitate via the electrical systems of the body, the other is designed to incapacitate via a fatality. And at least where I grew up, cops already need to file incident reports, so I'm not sure what you even want here.
This is not entirely true.
A Taser gives them an option on the Use of Force continuum between "soft/hard hands" (locks, striking, wrestling, etc) and "lethal force".
It is (by my understanding) not a replacement for deadly force. If a person is doing something warranting the use of deadly force (example: waving a firearm around, endangering bystanders, officers and themselves) then it's very likely the police will shoot to kill. If the subject happens to survive, that's by their own fortitude or sheer luck.
Less lethal options (pepper spray, mace, tasers, etc) fall a step below Lethal Force on said continuum, and as such may be utilized in a situation that has escelated beyond lower points on said continuum (physical presence, verbal commands, application of wrist/arm locks, handcuffs, etc) but before lethal force is warranted.
Apologies if I've drifted slightly off topic, but this seems to come up whenever tasers get mentioned, and it's (in my opinion) worth correcting.
An officer may choose to attempt to utilize a less than lethal option against a subject where lethal force would be appropriate, but that is at the officer's discretion and/or the policies of that department.
**Super Late Edit**: I should clarify that I'm not in any way stating that tasers can't be misused. Just felt that what seems to be a common misconception was worth attention.
Edit: tasers can include a computer that can tell exactly when it was used and for how long, so I imagine this information is already considered important by many departments around the world.
I wouldn't say that there was a 'national pitch', but for example there was an incident here in 2003 in which a guy was crazed on PCP and ended up dying in a struggle with a bunch of cops. After that they issued tasers to Cincinnati police, justifying the cost by saying that the tool would save lives. Tasers are too-often viewed as practically harmless, and police are indemnified of wrongdoing when a suspect dies because hey, he was on crack or what have you. The situation is, a tool that has great potential to save lives is being used to punish difficult suspects and in situation that do not warrant its use.