US Student Tasered for Asking John Kerry Questions

will be zapped.amazingly dumbed down audience,sitting there just looking like a lot of moo cows

Student Arrested, Tasered at Kerry Event

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Video of police Tasering a persistent questioner of Sen. John Kerry became an Internet and TV sensation Tuesday, generating fierce debate about free speech and the motives of the college student involved — a known prankster who often posts practical jokes online.

University of Florida President Bernie Machen said Monday's takedown, in which the student loudly yelled, "Don't Tase me, bro!" was "regretful." He asked for a state probe of campus police actions and placed two officers on leave.

The student in the middle of it all, 21-year-old Andrew Meyer, had no comment after he was released on his recognizance on various charges following a night in jail.

But details from his online writings and videos raised the question of whether his harangue during the forum was genuine or some kind of stunt.

Meyer, a senior telecommunications major from the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Weston, has a Web site featuring several homemade videos. In one, he stands in a street with a sign that says "Harry Dies" after the latest Harry Potter book was released. In another, he acts like a drunk in a bar while trying to pick up a man dressed in drag.

The site also has what is called a "disorganized diatribe" attributed to Meyer that criticizes the Iraq war, the news media for not covering the conflict enough and the American public for paying too much attention to celebrity news.

Another site had pictures of Meyer licking a woman's face and making a suggestive pose as he stood behind a fake cow. The site listed his activities as "getting wasted" and "being ridiculous."

Machen would not say whether the university had any previous conflicts with Meyer but indicated some such issues would come up in the investigation. He declined to elaborate and would not say whether he thought the latest episode was a prank.

Various videos of the arrest had been viewed more than 400,000 times on YouTube as of Tuesday afternoon and were in heavy rotation on TV news.

About 100 students gathered on campus Tuesday to plan protests, some wearing T-shirts denouncing police violence.

Benjamin Dictor, a liberal arts junior speaking for the group, called for the officers to be disciplined, Tasers to be banned on campus and the charges dropped.

"For a question to be met with arrest, not to mention physical violence, is completely unacceptable in the United States, especially in the halls of education," Dictor said.

University police said in a news release that officers had been summoned by the forum's sponsors to escort Meyer from the building, though organizers disputed that and said his microphone was cut off after he used a sexually explicit term.

Police added that Meyer was Tasered because he resisted when officers were attempting to place him in handcuffs. His lawyer, Robert Griscti, said it appeared Meyer was shocked after the cuffs were already on.

Just before Monday's scuffle started, Meyer asked a woman to tape his exchange with Kerry. One officer said the woman was "there to film him" and that Meyer asked, "Are you taping this? Do you have this? You ready?" before beginning his question.

Another officer said the 22-year-old woman said she was in line to ask a question ahead of Meyer when she was asked to tape, but she did not know him.

Meyer refused to leave the microphone after his allotted time was up, police said. He had asked Kerry about impeaching President Bush, why he didn't challenge the 2004 election results and whether he and Bush were members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University.

After Meyer repeatedly and loudly refused to walk away, two officers took him by the arms. Kerry can be heard saying, "That's all right, let me answer his question."

Audience members applauded, though it was difficult to tell whether it was for the officers' action or Kerry's remark. The audience for the most part sat quietly and watched the fracas.

Meyer struggled for several seconds as up to four officers tried to remove him from the room. He screamed for help and tried to break away from officers with his arms flailing, then was forced to the ground and ordered to stop resisting.

As Kerry told the audience he will answer the student's "very important question," Meyer yelled at the officers to release him, crying out, "Don't Tase me, bro," just before he was shocked. He was led from the room, screaming, "What did I do?"

An officer, however, said in the police report that Meyer's "demeanor completely changed once the cameras were not in sight" and that he was "laughing" and "lighthearted" on the way to jail.

Kerry, D-Mass., said Tuesday he regretted that a healthy discussion was interrupted, and said he never had a dialogue end that way in 37 years of public appearances.

"Whatever happened, the police had a reason, had made their decision that there was something they needed to do. Then it's a law enforcement issue, not mine," he told The Associated Press in Washington.

Meyer was arrested on charges of resisting an officer and disturbing the peace but the State Attorney's Office had yet to make the formal charging decision. Police recommended charges of resisting arrest with violence, a felony, and disturbing the peace and interfering with school administrative functions, a misdemeanor.

Griscti said Meyer was resting and wouldn't speak with reporters.

"He's had a long night, obviously," Griscti said.

remember walter wolfgang hustled out of the uk labour conference for
shouting rubbish?

well this is how the americans do it

see the start of this video for the background:
 http://youtube.com/watch?v=iqAVvlyVbag

and when the visuals go a bit jerky, check this for the full picture:
 http://youtube.com/watch?v=6bVa6jn4rpE

then there's more film of the guy being taken out at:
 http://youtube.com/watch?v=7NWukZhsiBw

these were recorded this week, when american democrat john kerry
addressed students at the university of florida

for more news about the victim, updates, and additional info, check
 http://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/381317.html


then pass this info on, and also DO SOMETHING! write/email the us
embassy, or john kerry, or ask the uk govt whether they agree with
this or will make a formal complaint.
or phone and complain here:
University of Florida Police Department: (352) 329-1111
University of Florida main switchboard: (352) 392-3261

this is the use of violence to stifle political opposition - otherwise
known as fascism. and democrat john kerry is making jokes on stage
while it is going on! he says the poor guy 'can't come up to swear him
in as president!'

another angle:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=RplFpvK76jc

another extraordinary thing about all this is that a roomful of people
who could see what was going on just allowed it to happen. a couple of
people shout out 'let him go'. and one woman screams 'what did he do?'
and tries to get more involved, but everyone else just sits there and
lets the fascism unfold infront of their eyes.

what is wrong with people? we talk about freedom and justice, and we
have truly entered a world of 'doublespeak'.

please act, and don't even begin to let it happen here - it's coming,
i can assure you. open your eyes and resist. please.

CORRECTION: University of Florida Police Department: 001 352 392-1111


University of Florida main switchboard: 001 352 392-3261

university florida police email address

 updinfo@admin.ufl.edu

Phone Captian Holkum @ (352)273-3301 @ University of Florida Campus Police station to voice your disgust at this awful excess in police power.

A) he legally unless under arrest not be touched, let alone tasered.

B) why do you taser a subdued man on the ground with his hands behind his back?

Anyone seeing More4 News yesterday would have seen the terrible way they reported this story, like it was some kind of laughing matter. The report contained plenty of stupid puns and wise-cracks.

This is not a laughing matter, with the police in this country expected to increase the use of these oppressive tools.

Its funny how when they want to convince the public about them it's all serious and deadly earnest, featuring 'actors' playing the roles of some armed and violent thug, just to show us how much the police need these, but when we see how they really will be used it's just a big joke.

The reality is that they will be used indiscriminately to suppress free speech and demonstrations. Quite disgusting from More4 News.

Naïve Americans who think they live in a free society should watch this video [1] filmed by students at a John Kerry speech September 17, Constitution Day, at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

At the conclusion of Kerry’s speech, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year old journalism student was selected by Senator Kerry to ask a question. Meyer held up a copy of BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast’s book, Armed Madhouse, and asked if Kerry was aware that Palast’s investigations determined that Kerry had actually won the election. Why, Meyer asked, had Kerry conceded the election so quickly when there were so many obvious examples of vote fraud? Why, Meyer, went on to ask, was Kerry refusing to consider Bush’s impeachment when Bush was about to initiate another act of military aggression, this time against Iran?

At this point the public’s protectors—the police—decided that Meyer had said too much. They grabbed Meyer and began dragging him off. Meyer said repeatedly, “I have done nothing wrong,” which under our laws he had not. He threatened no one and assaulted no one.

But the police decided that Meyer, an American citizen, had no right to free speech and no constitutional protection. They threw him to the floor and tasered him right in front of Senator Kerry and the large student audience, who captured on video the unquestionable act of police brutality. Meyer was carted off and jailed on a phony charge of “disrupting a public event.”

The question we should all ask is why did a United States Senator just stand there while Gestapo goons violated the constitutional rights of a student participating in a public event, brutalized him in full view of everyone, and then took him off to jail on phony charges?

Kerry’s meekness not only in the face of electoral fraud, not only in the face of Bush’s wars that are crimes under the Nuremberg standard, but also in the face of police goons trampling the constitutional rights of American citizens makes it completely clear that he was not fit to be president, and he is not fit to be a US senator.

Usually when police violate constitutional rights and commit acts of police brutality they do it when they believe no one is watching, not in front of a large audience. Clearly, the police have become more audacious in their abuse of rights and citizens. What explains the new fearlessness of police to violate rights and brutalize citizens without cause?

The answer is that police, most of whom have authoritarian personalities, have seen that constitutional rights are no longer protected. President Bush does not protect our constitutional rights. Neither does Vice President Cheney, nor the Attorney General, nor the US Congress. Just as Kerry allowed Meyer’s rights to be tasered out of him, Congress has enabled Bush to strip people, including American citizens, of constitutional protection and incarcerate them without presenting evidence.

How long before Kerry himself or some other senator will be dragged from his podium and tasered?

The Bush Republicans with complicit Democrats have essentially brought government accountability to an end in the US. The US government has 80,000 people, including ordinary American citizens, on its “no-fly list.” No one knows why they are on the list, and no one on the list can find out how to get off it. An unaccountable act by the Bush administration put them there.

Airport Security harasses and abuses people who do not fit any known definition of terrorist. Nalini Ghuman, a British-born citizen and music professor at Mills College in California was met on her return from a trip to England by armed guards at the airplane door and escorted away. A Gestapo goon squad tore up her US visa, defaced her British passport, body searched her, and told her she could leave immediately for England or be sent to a detention center.

Professor Ghuman, an Oxford University graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, says she feels like the character in Kafka’s book, The Trial. “I don’t know why it’s happened, what I’m accused of. There’s no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless.” Over one year later there is still no answer.

The Bush Republicans and their Democratic toadies have, in the name of “security,” made all of us powerless. While Senator John Kerry and his Democratic colleagues stand silently, the Bush administration has stolen our country from us and turned us into subjects.


Notes

[1]  http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?filmID=601

-------------------------------
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.

Armed Madhouse: America's most SHOCKING Book

Student tased for asking John Kerry questions While asking U.S. Senator John Kerry a question during a question and answer period on September 17th following Kerry's speech at the University of Florida, Gainesville in Alachua County, student Andrew Meyer was attacked by police officers, manhandled and tasered. Videos posted on the Internet show Meyer screaming for help as he is being tasered by a police stun gun. Kerry and the majority of the audience looked on mostly in silence.

After holding up, recommending and discussing Armed Madhouse, a book by Greg Palast, the investigative journalist who uncovered the massive, systematic and utterly illegal disenfranchisement of Black voters in Alachua County, Florida, during the 2000 election, Meyer had three questions for the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate. Meyer's first question to Kerry was, "How could you concede the election on the day?" Then he asked why Kerry didn’t call for impeaching Bush before Bush attacks Iran. Meyer's final question was if Kerry was a member of Skull and Bones, the secret society at Yale University, along with George Bush.

The microphone was cut on Meyers and then several officers pulled him from the podium. While Meyers was asking questions about the arrest, the police threw him to the ground and tasered him. Next, the police physically removed Meyer from the forum and told him that he was being arrested for trying to "incite a riot." He was later charged with a felony for resisting arrest with violence and a misdemeanor of disrupting the peace. Meyer was released from jail in the morning of September 18th, and plans to fight to have all charges dismissed.

On September 18th, at the University of Florida, more than 200 people held a solidarity picket with the detainee and against the limiting of free speech and the user of tasers by university police. Banners were carried saying “Freedom of speech is not a crime”, “Stop using tasers”. Firing the security guards from the university was also demanded.

Two days after Andrew Meyer, a 21-year-old journalism student at the University of Florida, was assaulted by campus police and given an electric shock for asking critical questions of Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry at a public forum, the US media has largely dropped the story.

Hundreds of thousands of people in the US and around the world have accessed various videos of the incident that are posted on the Internet, but the establishment media has decided to downplay the violent attack on free speech at a major American university.

After being dragged from the floor microphone by six police officers, handcuffed and shocked with a Taser gun, Meyer was held overnight in jail. The arresting police have recommended that he be charged with violently resisting arrest, a felony with a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and disturbing the peace and interfering with school administrative functions, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of 60 days in jail. As of this writing, formal charges have not been laid against the student.

Meyer was released from jail Tuesday morning. His lawyer said he will plead not guilty on all charges, adding, “I think the videotape speaks for itself.”

On Tuesday, some 300 students demonstrated at the Gainesville, Florida campus to denounce the police attack and demand that the officers involved be disciplined and the use of Tasers be banned.

At a press conference, University of Florida President Bernie Machen said he “regretted” the incident, but went on to suggest that the police action may have been justified. “We’re absolutely committed to having a safe environment for our faculty and our students so that a free exchange of ideas can occur,” he said. Later he told the press he thought it was “an open question as to whether or not the student impeded civil discourse.”

Two of the officers have been placed on paid administrative leave and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said it would launch an investigation. Machen also announced the formation of a student-faculty commission to investigate the incident.

Scattered press report on Wednesday, generally confined to the inside pages, for the most part portrayed Meyer as a disruptive publicity hound. He was referred to variously as a “heckler,” “agitator” and “prankster.” Typical was a Washington Post article headlined “Aiming to Agitate, Florida Student Got a Shock”

“This was not Meyer’s first escapade as a provocateur, but it may be his most physically punishing,” the reporter quipped.

Meyer is, in fact, well known on campus as an opponent of the Bush administration and the Iraq war. He runs a web site that combines efforts at satire and humor with denunciations of the war and the role of the media in promoting it.

The videos of his attempts to question Kerry, who spoke at an event sponsored by the Student Government Monday night, and the actions of campus police in cutting him off and dragging him from the hall, suggest that he may have been targeted in advance. The videos show that as soon as Meyer walked to the floor microphone, and was given permission by Kerry to ask questions even though the organizers had announced that the question-and-answer period was over, two police officers were already standing directly and menacingly behind him.

In an interview given Tuesday, Kerry said, “His first words were, ‘Senator Kerry, they’re trying to arrest me.’”

Meyer proceeded to ask Kerry why he had not challenged the disputed results of the 2004 presidential election, why he refused to call for the impeachment of Bush, and whether he had been a member, along with Bush, of Yale University’s secret Skull and Bones society.

At that point the microphone was cut off and the police immediately seized Meyer, who began shouting, “What did I do?” “Why am I being arrested?... Help!” After six officers had dragged the flailing and protesting student to the floor at the back of the hall and handcuffed him, they took out a Taser, prompting Meyer to plead, “Don’t Tase me!” This was followed be screams of pain from the electric shock.

The World Socialist Web Site on Wednesday spoke with Asia Johnson, an advertising major at the University of Florida, who witnessed the assault. Johnson, who said she was within five feet of the microphone when Meyer was attacked, told the WSWS, “Andrew was being handled by the police as he tried to get the mike. Kerry said he should be allowed to ask his question. As soon as the mike was turned off, the police pounced on him.

“They didn’t give him much of a chance to walk out. Three police dragged him up the aisle. He shouted, ‘Don’t Tase me,’ and I screamed, ‘Don’t Tase him!’ But they did. It was very scary.”

At no point did Kerry intervene to demand that the police halt their attack on Meyer. On Tuesday, he refused to denounce the police violence, telling the Associated Press, “Whatever happened, the police had a reason, had made their decision that there was something they needed to do. Then it’s a law enforcement issue, not mine.”

The web site of Taser International, Inc. boasts that “Taser weapons fire 50,000 volts up to 15 feet with more stopping power than a .357 Magnum.” According to Wikipedia, “Electroshock weapon technology uses a temporary high-voltage low-current electrical discharge to override the body’s muscle-triggering mechanisms. The recipient feels great pain, and can be momentarily paralyzed while an electric current is being applied... The resulting ‘shock’ is caused by muscles twitching uncontrollably, appearing as muscle spasms.”

This, plus a possible jail sentence, is the penalty for asking pointed questions at a public forum held on a university campus. And not a single prominent politician has issued a protest, least of all members of the Democratic Party.

This event says a great deal about the state of American democracy. It speaks to the immense nervousness and fear within the entire political establishment over the growth of popular opposition, especially among young people, to its policies of militarism and social reaction.

Both parties of big business are increasingly discredited, isolated and insulated from the broad mass of the people. Bush and Cheney speak only before military audiences or those thoroughly vetted to weed out any hint of opposition. As for leading Democrats such as Kerry, they dare not venture onto college campuses without a hefty police guard prepared to silence all expressions of opposition.

The population, with the support of both establishment parties and the media, is being conditioned to accept the militarization of all aspects of public life.

If what transpired Monday night is the response to some questions raised by one person at a public forum, what is being prepared in the event of mass protests and social and political struggles? The obvious answer is mass repression and state violence.

The police assault on Meyer raises a series of questions. Since when have the police become the arbiters of what constitutes permissible speech? In the incident report released by the University of Florida police, Officer Nicole Mallo writes that Meyer began “badgering” Kerry and “yelling as loud as he could as to sensationalize his presence.”

Even were this description accurate, which the videotapes refute, since when does such behavior constitute a crime?

Under whose instructions were the police acting? What were the ostensible security issues that necessitated a heavy police presence and, in particular, the attempt to prevent Meyer from speaking from the minute he came to the microphone?

Have he and other known opponents of the war and the Bush administration been singled out by university authorities, and, if so, at whose urging?

Is there a connection between this outrageous attack on free speech and the vast network of data bases being assembled by government authorities, compiled by means of illegal spying and other police state measure instituted in the name of the “war on terror?”

These questions can be answered only by means of a genuinely independent investigation carried out by students and faculty. More fundamentally, the escalating assault on democratic rights can be countered only through a break with the two parties of war and social reaction and the development of an independent political movement of working people and youth.

To quote John Stewart:

"So, here we have an unfortunate combination of police overreaction, and student douchebaggery..."

Watch the video. It's not like buddy went up to the mic and was immediately tasered and wrestled to the ground. He went up to the mic and was a loud-mouthed douchebag. They cut his mic, and he kept blathering. (about Skull and Bones conspiracy nonsense, no less.) So the cops tried to drag him out, and he engaged in further abject stupidity.

When you dig your own hole, sometimes you have to sit in it. He didn't deserve to be tasered, but he wasn't some cherubic angel accosted for no reason. He was accosted for his extended douchebaggery.

Was on utube watching vids and commentating on the kid who got tasered for questioning John Kerry in the u.s.

a few ppl comments say they would never go to u.s. ext, as police state, and glad they are living here.

I was just thinking about the way the polis behaved on thursday at the dorchester, no means badly(in comparrasion to how they do behave) but we were penned in and escorted to and fro, etc, some people denied access.
Plus this brave woman, comradely thought in solidarity with her, and everyone fighting back, and also thinking about the way Ramparts was treated by polis(was not there)

Add to that the on-going parliment square resistance e.g the sunday picnics and recent behaviour re putting nelson mandela behind bars( most of u knows what i mean, the statue, and hiding of protesters, etc) and the big list of how the s.o.c.p.a. has been used. - btw, when the polis kept hassling us , only verbally and constant photography, i ended up replying to one about him insisting he was doing his job.
pointed out there was a 'serious organised crime' across the road - whereby the 'masters of war' were spending some of their profits on immoral(and sometimes breaking, directly or indirectly, laws, esp international ones and snactions, etc) buying and selling of arms needed under capitalism for all the ensuing wars,etc
that he was a 'police'
that he should 'act' and arrest them


and add to that, the fact that john bowden should really have been out of prison months ago, and was in an open prison having w/ends at home, and even before that, was working in the community with vunerable people, so he had served his maximun recommended scentence, and proved he was no danger/

yet was taken, despite breaking no laws or rules, back to a higher cat locked prison, cos of the report that Matt Stillman (now under investigation) wrote, calling the ABC prisoner support groups - terrorists WTF!! and John refused to denounce them.
also sps and individual screws, social workers et, may have wanted revenge and were being petty etc to punish John further - this time for all his effective critism of prison life, exposing racism and brutality,etc in the system, showing solidarity with other cons and always fighting back, using heaps diff means,

yet only hear today he is finally being moved, and to a prison miles away, etc, etc

like other posters point out, what hapens in u.s. happens here......

, i try not to be violent on demos actions anymore cos can be counter-productive, tho polis do get pissed sometimes when i ask them to join us and stop betraying their class, etc,etc

but think, that if i saw some poor kid - or anyone - i would show solidarity and do some action to defends us,etc, not just sit there and let him bee shackled

hope this makes sense, been up all night :-)

just got so many answers to those commentators on utube who say glad they live in england, etc and not a police state like u.s.

capitalism and the creeping fascism is worldwide, and the fighback should be too

in solidarity