09/18/2007
John Kerry Releases Statement on Florida Taser Incident
Senator John Kerry released a statement this afternoon about the unfortunate incident at the University of Florida, in which student Andrew Meyer was was pulled from a microphone by police and led away before being tackled and tasered in front of an auditorium full of students. Meyer was in the process of asking Kerry a series of questions.
Said Kerry: "In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way. I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention. I asked the police to allow me to answer the question and was in the process of responding when he was taken into custody. I was not aware that a taser was used until after I left the building. I hope that neither the student nor any of the police were injured. I regret enormously that a good healthy discussion was interrupted."
Background
University of Florida Student Tasered at John Kerry Event [tr]
Posted 2:15 PM EST by Andy Towle in Florida, John Kerry, Law Enforcement, News | Permalink
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It's obviously a police state that we live in now, and the power of that state (the Nazi state) empowered by Bush, has stripped us of our Freedom of Speech (among other rights).
Looks like the police, like the FBI, NSA, CIA, Secret Service, etc., just do whatever the hell they want to do.
Posted by: Jordan | Sep 18, 2007 9:26:34 PM
So, there's a lot of disturbing and disgusting things about this - the whole police gesture to preemptorily take him out, Kerry's inability to assert himself and take over the situation... But i think most disturbing is the # of college students sitting and smiling. In the first video clip you can see guys near the back of the room, and near the cuffing and tasering, smiling: this is totally funny to them. In the second video, girls near the front of the room are smiling. I hate to just re-use an old generalization: But what the heck is the inundation of media doing to people? This to me is a similar effect is all those video shorts shows of people being hurt in accidents... All life in which someone is unexpectedly being hurt is funny. The reality of the situation, the real impact, the fact that's real people, and its attendant meanings, aren't perceived. Can't these kids even imagine what it would be like if it happened to them? It's an amazingly small representation of an overall phenomenon: This is what happens to democracy when people forget what democracy is supposed to be and look like. This is really sad.
Posted by: matt | Sep 19, 2007 1:09:59 AM
After reading some of the comments above (and soon to be below, I'm sure) I don't have to guess why our country is in a death spiral to a totalitarian police state.
On what occasion does someone deserve to be thrown to the ground and electrocuted for being a nuisance?? How can any patriotic American support the use of such bully behavior?
Yeah, the guy was obviously a bit wound up and intentionally trying to fluster Kerry. He wasn't very eloquent and was only armed with his mouth and a paperback book.
He actually seemed to get to the end of his ranting/questioning when the cops yanked him away. Wouldn't the best course of action be to let Kerry respond and put this guy in his place for being a pain in the ass??
What transpired before the footage we have seen so far is irrelevant. If he did anything that was threatening prior to stepping to the microphone, he would have been restrained long before he was pulled away.
You can see the cops literally lining up behind him just itching to drag him away.
The only risk this kid provided is that he may have actually squeezed out a well articulated question. God forbid!
Or maybe some of you WANT this to happen again: http://may4.org/?q=node/5
Posted by: Patrick W. | Sep 19, 2007 10:59:47 AM