Student Tasered at Kerry Speech

In an incident reminiscent of the UCLA student who was tasered by police last November, a University of Florida journalism student, Andrew Meyer, was tasered yesterday at a John Kerry speech during a Q&A session after "rushing" an open microphone and demanding the Senator answer his questions:

The student claimed that University Police Department officers had already threatened to arrest him, and then proceeded to question Kerry about why he didn't contest the 2004 presidential election and why there had been no moves to impeach President Bush.

A minute or so into what became a combative diatribe, Meyer's microphone was turned off and officers began trying to physically remove him from the auditorium. Meyer flailed his arms, yelling as police tried to restrain him.

Meyer was then pushed to the ground while he screamed for help and demanded to know what he done that warranted arrest. The police threatened to taser him, and, when he resisted being cuffed, though he was being held on the ground by several officers, he was tased, at which point he writhed and screamed in pain.

Throughout the incident, Kerry urged the audience to "cool down" and acknowledged that Meyer had raised an important question. As officers escorted Meyer from the auditorium into the lobby, Kerry went on to explain that he did not think there was sufficient evidence of voter suppression to justify contesting the 2004 election.

"We just couldn't do it in good conscience because we didn't have that evidence," he said.

Speaking of good conscience, I'm curious as to where it falls on the "conscience spectrum" to let a kid who might well be an asshole, but has ultimately appears to have done nothing aside from express his opinions, be detained, handcuffed, and tasered by police without saying a goddamned word to stop it.

Was that auditorium so huge that Kerry couldn't grasp what was happening? I mean, you can see the edge of the stage in the video clip.

If Meyer was being annoyingly, undeterrably disruptive (which, given the scattered applause that erupts as he's detained, he likely was), it's understandable that the police would attempt to remove him. But when they start threatening to employ weaponry against him, and certainly when they do and the kid starts yowling in pain, that's when it's time to intervene. If those cops had been kicking the shit out of him, I can't imagine everyone would have stood idly by.