By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Go Bruins: cops Taser student, new media converge [UPDATED]
There’ve been too many stories lately about making mini-movies with cell phones, such as this AP dispatch about “mobilettes,” a homely bastard of a word created to describe the results of a class taught at Boston University “through a unique partnership with cellular company Amp’d Mobile [backed by Qualcomm and Viacom and ” branding itself as a youth-oriented company”] and taught by director Jan Egleson. During the semester, the students will produce a series of short episodes that eventually will be distributed by the company for its cellular customers. The students have challenged each other to shoot it using only the phones, despite obstacles surrounding sound and video quality.” But, as with any emerging medium, unintended uses are more intriguing, such as in this sloppy yet horrific amateur recording of UCLA campus policemen Tasering a student. No news of when UCLA will release images from their substantial surveillance system. The Daily Bruin’s Sara Taylor reports that “Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and then taken into custody when he did not exit the CLICC Lab in Powell Library in a timely manner. Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check at around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday… Tabatabainejad did not immediately leave, and UCPD officers resorted to use of the Taser when Tabatabainejad did not do as he was told. A six-minute video showed Tabatabainejad audibly screaming in pain as he was stunned several times with a Taser, each time for three to five seconds. He was told repeatedly to stand up and stop fighting, and was told that if he did not do so he would “get Tased again.” UPDATE: Mr. Tabatabainejad is filing suit, reports the LA Times. “The lawyer said Tabatabainejad eventually decided to leave the library but when an officer refused the student’s request to take his hand off him, the student fell limp to the floor, again to avoid participating in what he considered a case of racial profiling. After police started firing the Taser, Tabatabainejad tried to “get the beating, the use of brutal force, to stop by shouting and causing people to watch. Generally, police don’t want to do their dirties in front of a lot of witnesses.” [Bonus irony at the jump.]
“The incident follows the recent announcement that four of the campus police department’s nearly 60 full-time sworn officers had won so-called Taser Awards granted by the manufacturer of the device to “law enforcement officers who save a life in the line of duty through extraordinary use of the Taser.” The award stemmed from an incident in which officers subdued a patient who allegedly threatened staff at the campus’ Neuropsychiatric Hospital with metal scissors.”
