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Mostafa Tabatabainejad should have been clubbed with a nightstick
By yaman | January 11, 2007
Background: On the evening of November 16, 2006, UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad was repeatedly tasered by UCPD officers in the library despite the fact that he posed no threat to the officers or to the surrounding students. Later that week, an estimated 400 UCLA students protested the incident. A similar but less populated demonstration followed the following week at UC Berkeley, where the president of the University of California–an official with direct oversight and influence over all UCPD branches–resides. I originally wrote this as a response to Larry Suh’s editorial in the Daily Cal and to promote a resolution that was being put forth before the ASUC Senate. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get it in before break.
Mostafa Tabatabainejad should have been clubbed with a nightstick, without the police taking taking so-called mercies and precautions by using their new gadgets. At least, then, presented with the bare image of the brutal use of force, we would not have been engaged in this deceptive talk of lesser evils and “better” applications of force.
Would we have responded differently if Mostafa was beaten with a club instead? Why?What would have been the difference? The police, by their own testimony, did not apply Taser guns to incapacitate him, but rather used the painful stun-drive mode to win his obedience. Even they concede that he was not dangerous. Their application of the gun was part of a technique called “pain-compliance”–a technique by which force is used in order to “encourage” the subject to submit to the will of his “superiors.”
If the use of the Taser gun, then, deludes us into believing that such an application of force is permissible or less abhorrent than the more crude image of an officer choking a student with a club–as Officer Duren, the same officer who attacked Mostafa, has done on a previous occassion (not to mention previously shooting an unarmed homeless man in a university restroom)–then we, the student population and the community, are better off without them because we are no longer applying them as mere tools of law enforcement. Instead, we have made them false symbols of civility, mental roadblocks allowing us to ignore the power dynamic that was made apparent at Powell Library last fall.
Nothing makes this more clear than Larry Suh’s ill-conceived apologia for the officers’ conduct last semester. Instead of looking at the real issues here–that tactics like “pain compliance” are currently used by the UCPD and that consequently the actions that led to Mostafa’s treacherous screams may have violated moral laws, but not standing policies–Suh gives us the platitude that left to their own devices, those with authority do not step out of bounds. In other words, if there was nothing wrong with Mostafa’s behavior, the officers, eternally acting in good faith, never would have intervened.
Is this the lesson that history has taught us? We are losing our vigilance, and nothing can make this more clear to us than personal introspection and reflection on the events of the past several years. Recall the essence of “pain-compliance:” a technique by which force is used in order to “encourage” the subject to submit to the will of his “superiors.”
Does this sound familiar? At the same time that the country debates the permissibility of torture in our top security detention centers (what a sad thing that torture is even legitimately considered in this way!), we now have a congruent debate of our own. Pain-compliance is nothing but a euphemism for torture, but whereas in the national debate our voices are often lost, we have and will continue to have a persistent presence on this campus.
Our modest and simple demands for justice can be met. Existing structures here have proven to be insufficient since Officer Duren still has a job, and it is clear that the administrators at UCLA are not doing their job. Officer Duren is still out policing the campus, not even subject to suspension pending investigation. Little attention has been paid to the fact that a bureaucratic review of Duren’s behavior in 1996 led to recommendations for his dismissal that were ignored by UCLA police chief Karl Ross. The system as it stands is not working.
Therefore it is incumbent upon us to demand that Chancellor Robert Birgeneau (California Hall) and University of California President Robert Dynes (office in 311 Birge Hall) respond to our calls for the establishment of a community review council composed of students and faculty nominated by members of the ASUC Senate, the Graduate Assembly, and the Academic Senate that will review the policies by which the UCPD operates in its interactions with students and others under its jurisdiction.
We need a council that has genuine authority and legitimacy, not one that is implemented as a formality or as an afterthought like the current review board. We need a council whose voice will be heard by the administration, by the public, and by those to whom we have given the task of protecting us, not policing us.
The first step to those ends is for the Chancellor and President to give us signs of life by indicating that they have heard our calls and will respond, perhaps agreeing to the same sort of special action that Chief Victoria Harrison agreed to give the ASUC Senate last month (though she did not appear, and Assistant Chief Mitch Celaya substituted). The second step is for the student community to come together and remember that this is our university, our administration, and our police force. When these institutions believe that they can run roughshod over our concerns, we need to remind them otherwise by holding them accountable for their transgressions.
The ASUC senate does not need to do the obvious by passing resolutions condemning torture or police brutality: it needs to adopt and promote a program that will curb those things by mandating greater student and community input into the policies by which the UCPD operates.
A brief update: A weak resolution was indeed passed in December, and the UCPD has expressed interest in having an audience with a group of students. Despite the break, the incident has not been forgotten and we will continue to work for a second stronger and substantive resolution, and will push for Robert Dynes and Robert Birgeneau to stop ignoring students.
Topics: Comment |
May 11th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I agree with you. for the same reason that I think executions should only be carried out with firing squads and hangings.
Regarding this incident, I saw the video on youtube, and the thing that struck me most, besides the stupidity of the police officers, was the mob mentality of the crowd. I doubt any of those kids would have been so brave if the environment weren’t already so chaotic and the police occupied. Obviously the crowd also made the police nervous, which led them to make more poor decisions.