Shocking Citizen Journalism

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Written by Felicia Williams November 16, 2006

Contributors: Spencer Somers

A video of a UCLA officer using a Taser on a student was uploaded to YouTube yesterday. This is the third videotape of a Los Angeles police incident that involves “excessive force” to surface in the past week.

Technology is watching and spreading the news. With video cameras being built into cell phones and still cameras, a new surge in citizen journalism continues to gain momentum. Once a novelty feature, cell phone video is quickly becoming a valuable tool for capturing political inequities. This week, LA police officers thrice became the subjects of this guerilla video-journalism, which has exposed their brutality in situations portrayed as seemingly unprovoked.

When Mostafa Tabatabainejad, 23, refused to provide his ID to the community service officer, he was asked to leave. Refusing to comply with the random ID check, Tabatabainejad was asked to leave "multiple times" before the campus police were called in.

Despite the UCLA police report that said “the officers attempted to escort him out, he went limp and continued to refuse to cooperate with officers or leave the building," witnesses defend their fellow student and argue there was no resistance. And when campus police arrived, Tabatabainejad had begun to “walk toward the door with his backpack”.

This video, shot from a student's camera phone, shows part of the Tabatabainejad's struggle and has clear audio of the student yelling, "Here's your Patriot Act, here's your fucking abuse of power," while he struggled with the officers.

“It was beyond grotesque," said a witness who was quoted in the LA Times. "By the end they took him over the stairs, lifted him up and Tasered him on his rear end. It seemed like it was inappropriately placed. The Tasering was so unnecessary and they just kept doing it."

While this video is disturbing, it can't be denied that captures such as this are an exciting reverse-Orwellian act of citizen's response. Upholders of the Second Amendment insist that we keep guns to protect ourselves from our government, maybe now all we need is a cell phone.