http://www.blakeross.com/2006/11/17/on-the-ucla-tasering/Account from eyewitness UCLA student Mher (last name withheld):
The first thing I noticed was the student shout “don’t touch me” the very first time when he was still as his desk (a little earlier than when the camera began to roll I believe. I was about 30 feet away from him.) I hadn’t noticed the policemen come in. I looked over and I saw the student standing up, his hands were in the air in a very “get your hands off me” manner. One of the police officers did in fact have his hands on him and was grabbing one of his right arms, or maybe more but I didn’t pay too much attention to it right away (I was doing work on the computer). I returned to typing as it seemed that he was just going to escorted out. I thought the incident was over then and went back to my paper. A very short time later (maybe I’d estimate 30 secondsish) I heard him again, but this time farther down by the exit of the computer lab, shouting “don’t touch me” and soon after the shock.
I was stunned and I think most other people were stunned as well. One girl started trotting over from where I was and said “you can’t do that”. I got up soon after and walked over. I didn’t see what happened before the first shock, but I soon approached and saw him held on the ground by the officers and in the midst of being cuffed. I don’t know if he had been struggling up to this point, but when I got there he was pretty much subdued and the officers were doing the struggling (turning him over to finish cuffing him, manhandling him pretty much). He yelled a few things during this time and you can hear it all on the video. Then the officers were dragging him up from his arms and demanding that he stand up. He looked really messed up at this point, as if he had just ran a race or something. His face was kind of pinkish (probably from the shock and all the shouting) and his body was slumped. I started saying to him “get up dude, just get up”, and I think some other people may have been encouraging him. He wasn’t making a move and just about then they shocked him again.
At this point a couple of other students and I started shouting back at the cops. I hadn’t seen what led to the first shock, but I did see the time in between and the second shock was completely unjustifiable. He was definitely not being violent, he wasn’t moving, at all. A few of us were shouting as they led him down the stairway and shocked him right there going down and he fell pretty hard on the tiles of the steps (I think you can see him flying up on the video). They dragged him down to the entrance foyer and there I, and a couple other students became more vocal. The CSOs were trying to block us off at this point, but they were porous and few. Several students had been demanding badge numbers, but the 2 officers had obviously not responded up to that point, and never did. (The student was shocked AT LEAST two more times before he was finally dragged out of the building.)
In the foyer, there were a few other officers. One of them came to approach us. One other student and I started speaking with this officer, saying mostly 1) this student is being assaulted by these officers and you have to stop this and 2) we want the names and badge numbers of all the officers there. He told us that we would get them and that we needed to calm down. The student was pretty much motionless at this point except for the few times he was being tased.
SNIP
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