Beware of easy knee-jerk reactions

In my opinion, he was asking for it.

When Mostafa Tabatabainejad refused to present his BruinCard in Powell Library when asked during a routine check by Community Service Officers, scoffing at them and police, it created an uproar, the fallout of which has graced airwaves and prompted headlines internationally.

Whether or not the police used excessive force, there is no doubt that the student showed a blatant disregard for UCLA’s regulations and police authority.

Most people are only aware of the latter part of the incident – the police repeatedly using a Taser on a handcuffed student.

They therefore come away with a mistaken account of the incident, missing critical events that caused the violence of the situation to escalate.

Tabatabainejad refused multiple police demands to leave Powell before any force was used, according to a university police statement. The police were called when Tabatabainejad refused to leave after being asked repeatedly to do so by CSOs.

Though the student eventually started to leave after the police arrived, he began to resist them.

At this point, when the student stopped cooperating, the police began to use the Taser on the student.

The disobedience continued. On the video, you can clearly hear the police officers asking Tabatabainejad to stand up.

“Fuck off,” he replied.

“Stand up, or you’ll get Tased again,” an officer said.

The police repeated the command for the student to stand up 23 times before using the Taser on him the second time.

Still he refused to stand. Watching the video of the event, I counted a total of 73 requests by the police for the student to stand up.

Many question the use of any force in this situation, but force is not without its purposes. To keep the rest of us safe, officers expose themselves to the constant threat of violence, and some officers see their colleagues killed in the line of duty.

For this reason, there are certain tactics police use in order to protect their own lives, tactics that may seem brutal or heavy-handed if taken out of this context.

We now know, in hindsight, that Tabatabainejad was not dangerous, but he might have acted in such a way to make the police worried about potential danger. People should take this into account before jumping to conclusions.

Regardless of whether or not the police used excessive force, we should all agree that Tabatabainejad is at least partially to blame for his less-than-brilliant behavior.

Student responses to the incident have been varied. At least four Facebook groups have already been created, including “I forgot my BruinCard.. please don’t TASER me” and “Powell Taze: Taze Him Again!”, representing opposite responses to the occurrence.

There is even a protest planned for today, taking issue with the police handling of the situation. On the Facebook page he created for the event, third-year business economics student Combiz Abdolrahimi calls for the protest on grounds that racial profiling was responsible for the situation.

But attempts to paint this as an issue of racial profiling really stretch the facts. I – who by no means look middle Eastern – have been asked to produce my BruinCard by CSOs.

If I then refused to comply with the directions of the CSO – being asked to leave – I would fully expect to be treated somewhat roughly by the police.

People of any race are regularly carded by CSOs after 11 p.m., at which time those without UCLA IDs are asked to leave. In this case, the whole situation was created by the student acting out.

Posters littering campus promoting the protest pose the question, “Since when is it OK to Taser students?”

I’d like to suggest an answer: It might be OK when the student picks a fight with police officers.

It would be wise to postpone the instinctual reaction to partial accounts of the incident, and consider that we enjoy a certain amount of safety because of the vigilance of our CSOs and police. For their sake and ours, it would be a good idea to listen to these officials when they’re going about their jobs.

Send your favorite Rodney King jokes to Lazar at dlazar@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.