• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

DOCUMENTS Click here for a pdf version of UCPD's taser policy.

Mostafa Tabatabainejad has hired a lawyer to sue university police, and his attorney has offered the public its first look into the student’s perspective of the incident in Powell Library in which he was hit with a Taser five times Tuesday.

Tabatabainejad’s lawyer, civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman, announced plans Friday to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against UCPD for “brutal excessive force” and false arrest, and described the sequence of events as his client saw them.

At around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, Tabatabainejad, a fourth-year Middle Eastern and North African studies and philosophy student, was asked to leave the library for failing to present his BruinCard during a random check. The 23-year-old student was hit with a Taser five times when he did not leave quickly and cooperatively upon being asked to do so.

According to Yagman, Tabatabainejad was approached by Community Service Officers, but declined to present his BruinCard when asked because he believed he was the subject of racial profiling.

Tabatabainejad was born in the United States and is Baha’i by religion and Iranian by descent.

“As far as I know, he was the only one being asked. It’s also been told that he was the only person there who appeared to be ethnically Middle Eastern,” Yagman said.

The CSOs on duty announced they would be checking IDs, as is routine procedure in the library after 11 p.m., said Assistant Chief of Police Jeff Young.

Routine checks do not necessarily include a check of all students in the library.

David Remesnitsky, a 2006 UCLA alumnus who was present in the CLICC lab during the incident, said the CSO spent five to 10 minutes checking IDs, but said he was not personally asked for identification.

Tabatabainejad did not leave the library immediately when he was asked to, but shortly afterward had begun to walk to the door with his backpack, witnesses and his attorney said.

Two officers approached the student and grabbed his arm as he was walking toward the door.

When they did not let go of his arm, Tabatabainejad fell limp to the floor because he did not want to participate in a case of racial profiling, his attorney said.

The UCPD officers interpreted his action as resistance and a refusal to leave the premises, according to a UCPD press release, and at this point determined it was necessary to subdue him with the use of a Taser, which is classified by UCPD as a “pain compliance technique.”

According to UCPD policy, officers can use pain compliance techniques when doing so “appears necessary to further a legitimate law enforcement purpose.”

The policy further states that the technique should be used when there is “a potential for injury to the officer(s) or others” or a “potential risk of serious injury to the individual being controlled.”

According to the policy, officers should also consider the nature of the offense, the individual’s level of resistance, “the need for a prompt resolution,” and the possibility of “other reasonable alternatives.”

Officers who have received departmental training can use Tasers in the drive-stun mode “to eliminate physical resistance from an arrestee in accomplishing an arrest or physical search ... when a skirmish line is deployed and/or for pain compliance against passive resisters,” and “to stop a dangerous animal” according to the policy posted on the UCPD’s Web site.

The policy does not specify how many times a Taser can be used on a subject or for how long the Taser can be held to the subject’s body, and it is in the officer’s hands to determine whether the use of pain compliance is necessary in a given situation.

“(The officers) have to make a determination about what the appropriate level of force is, and they respond according to their training and the situation they’re faced with,” Young said.

But Tabatabainejad and his attorney are asserting that the amount of force the officers determined was necessary constitutes police brutality, which Yagman described as “the use of great force against somebody who posed no threat.”

Young, however, has said the officers could not have known at the time that Tabatabainejad was not a threat nor could they have been sure that he was not armed.

Tabatabainejad’s case has not been filed, so neither university police nor the UCLA administration have publicly commented on it, and since the entire incident is under investigation, they are also not commenting on the specifics of the situation.

Yagman said his firm has handled hundreds of cases similar to Tabatabainejad’s, but said this is the first one involving a student in a library. He said these type of cases typically take a few years.