Just to continue the dialogue about the roles of bystanders, upstanders, and perpetrators, I saw this clip on the news and then Associated Press about a University of Florida student, Andrew Meyer, who was asking some very provocative questions at a forum that featured John Kerry. He wound up being tasered and then arrested for resisting an officer and disturbing the peace, but hasn't yet been tried. The police are considering formally charging Meyer with resisting arrest with violence, which is a felony, and disturbing the peace and interfering with school administrative functions, a misdemeanor crime. There are numerous perspectives that we could address about this issue but one of my first reactions was to the fact that no one from the audience got up to help Meyer. Then again, is Meyer considered to be an upstander or a perpetrator? I wondered what Florida University had to say about the actions of the police in an academic setting; does tasering promote free speech and learning?
From the youtube.com site, there are links to some reputable (and some not) sites that have more background information on the situation.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
While it is unfortunate that Andrew Meyer was tasered, I do not believe that free speech was violated. Meyer was tasered because he resisted arrest. He clearly went over his 1 or 2 minute time frame, as well as started to scream: this is known as a public disturbance. The police approached him and tried to escort him out, but he resisted. As seen in the video, Meyer put up quite a fight, and tasering seemed the only option left for the police to place the cuffs on him and escort him out.
Therefore, this is not an issue of free speech, but an issue of police protocol. When should police be allowed to use tasers? Should tasers even be allowed? What should the police have done?
Meyer kept saying throughout the video, "what have I done? Why am I being arrested?" I think that if this were explained to him, he may not have resisted like he did. While anyone will resist to being arrested, if it is incomprehensible to the victim, it will make the situation worse.
I think that nobody in the room got up to help Meyer because they feared possible arrest too. The police could have arrested someone who tried to help Meyer on other grounds. I think the people were thinking about themselves too much or maybe they thought that he deserved to be punished....
It's too hard to make a law/rule about when to use tasers because it is just going to be judgement call depending on the situation. The police should use them only when they absolutely need to. To me at least, it seems like they should only be used in extreme cases, this not being one of them. Although Meyer was physically resisting, I think the the four or so policemen could have handled the situation without using them.
my main question is why did the police originally try to restrain him?
I agree that tasering was necessary to some extent because he was resisting arrest which is illegal... but I may have misunderstood but why was he originally restrained?
To answer Tal, I believe that Meyer was restrained and tasered because he went over the allotted time for a question. He was making statements and accusations rather than asking a question and refused to comply or step away when they told him to actaully ask a question. What I find interesting is the motive for his outburst. According to an article in the SF Chronicle which can be found here, Meyer might actually have created the disturbance as part of a prank or stunt. This seem probable since he actually asked the woman after him in line ahead of time to tape the whole scene.
However, assuming that this was not a pre-planned stunt, I do not believe that the incident had to do with free speech, as Greg mentioned, because Meyer refused to obey instructions for the forum and and refused to step away or ask a question to the point where he needed to be guided away from the microphone. There is a difference between being censored and not being allowed to make certain statements because the occasion is simply not appropriate. For instance, being told not to shout things during a public speech or in the middle of class is not censorship.
I'm curious to know, now, what instances qualify as censorship? What is the difference between censorship and "obeying social norms?"
Post a Comment