The Consequence of No Respect: Tabatabainejad

The campus police at UCLA routinely check the identification of people in the library after 11:00 p.m. to ensure that they are authorized to be there. Students at UCLA should be aware that this practice is for the sole purpose of ensuring their safety.

Most police agencies allow officers to use Tasers only if a suspect poses a physical threat, or is acting combatively. But UCLA police are also permitted to use Tasers on passive resisters as a pain compliance technique. They use the device in a stun mode, which affects only the part of the body being touched, as opposed to disabling the person entirely. The students at UCLA may or may not have been aware of this policy before an incident involving Mostafa Tabatabainejad. They are aware of it now, and many don't like it.

On Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2006, at about 11:00 p.m., community service officers and UCLA police asked Mostafa Tabatabainejad several times to show them his student identification. Mostafa repeatedly refused. He shouted at the officers. When officers tried to take him out, he fell limp. At that point, the officers shocked him with the Taser.

Students are outraged. They demanded an investigation. They are marching to protest the use of Tasers. And they are all totally oblivious to the fact that Mostafa, and Mostafa alone is the one person who could avoided the whole thing.

FACT: When a person complies with the law, when he listens to, respects, and obeys a police officer, when he does not actively or passively resist the directions of the police, the Tasers do not appear. Any pain that Mostafa suffered is the result of his stupid response to a simple request from the officer.

It's not hard--all he had to do was this:

Officer: It is after 11:00 p.m. Please show me your student identification.
Student: Yes, sir. (he fumbles in his pockets, checks his billfold) I can't seem to find it, sir. I must have left it in my room.
Officer: I'm sorry, but you will have to leave the library. If you locate your identification card, you may return and use the library. That is the policy.
Student: Yes sir, I understand. I will get my I.D. before I come back. Thank you sir. (student exits the library)

Gosh, that's easy. It's the same formula I put in my post about respecting the police. Be polite, do what the officer asks, and all is fine.

But for so many misguided souls like Mostafa, self is all-important. The authorities are wrong. They are prejudiced. They just want to make life inconvenient for us. We don't have to listen to anyone, because we know better.

Sure, it's possible that the officer may have been 'profiling' when he selected this student. Sure, the school policy seems to be more of an inconvenience than a protection. Maybe the Taser is too strong a weapon for the UCLA police to use, or the policy for its use is too broad. But those are topics for another time, another place, and for a school administrator, not for the officer. It is self-defeating to bring the tension of those thoughts into the simple process of checking a student ID at the library.

If the student does set those issues aside, and respectfully obeys the officer, nothing bad happens at the library. The student can bring those issues up another day in the office of a dean or an advisor.

A little good and and much bad come from the incident. The good is that an investigation will be conducted to see if the officers involved did exceed their authority. The bad is that student groups, the media, and the ACLU are blowing the incident out of proportion. They are stirring up a pile of irrelevant issues. And they will teach a few more idiots that its all right to resist a police officer.