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Last Tuesday night, after refusing to show his BruinCard to university police officers, UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad was viciously stunned with a Taser five times.

We barely had to wait until morning for the Internet to become abuzz with premature accusations and unsubstantiated speculation.

Our parents’ generation had to wait around for days for silly nuisances such as verifiable facts to come out and even months for lengthy investigations to reach reasoned and judicious conclusions.

Thank God for blogs.

Video of the incident has found its way onto YouTube, gaining national attention. While it doesn’t show what happened before the altercation began, I think we can all agree that the police were in the wrong.

The protest held Friday was right to demand an independent investigation into the incident to figure out if any of the actions taken by UCPD were wrongful.

Protesters’ commitment to a judicious, independent inquiry was obvious, with such chants as “U-C-P-D, you disgust me.”

“U-C-P-D, let’s have a fair and balanced inquiry,” just didn’t have the same bite.

Protesters also wore signs on their shirts saying, “I’m a student, don’t Taser me,” reaffirming the well-known fact that students are always compliant with police officers and never act in a way that merits a physical response.

The video taken of the event shows the skirmish quite clearly from behind a bank of computers and a crowd of students.

OK, so you can’t see much, but the audio is still quite telling.

The police were demanding that Tabatabainejad stand up, while simultaneously sending electricity through his nervous system, something that could paralyze him temporarily if the shocks were longer than three seconds.

Fortunately, I watch a lot of “CSI: Miami,” so I was able to quickly deduce from watching the video that the shocks were all 3.1 seconds long and immediately shared this information with my Facebook friends.

What the police officers did was torture. We might as well rename it Guantanamo Library, the Abu Ghraib computer lab or some other overblown, inappropriate analogy.

The assumption that Tabatabainejad was targeted because he is of Persian descent is, of course, completely true.

Unsubstantiated assumptions usually are, and who really has the time to wait for the results of that inquiry to be released?

Al-Qaida has been widely rumored to be threatening such landmarks as the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Powell Library CLICC Lab. UCPD officers clearly let the terrorist paranoia get to their heads.

Are we, who think the officers were flat-out wrong, jumping to conclusions? Perhaps, but isn’t that what higher education is all about?

UCPD should reflect on this incident, re-evaluate its Taser policy and consider selecting a less-violent tool for subduing students. I would suggest 15th-century Samurai swords or anthrax.

Whatever it takes to prevent another student from being stunned with a Taser ever again.

Did you know that the other Jed eats babies? E-mail your reactions to this Jed at jlevine@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.