You've probably heard about this video floating around YouTube of UCLA police officers using a taser on a suspect:

Let's just cut right to it. My thoughts:

• Based on this clip, we don't get a full picture of what happened. According to "news sources" the guy was not supposed to be in the CLICC area after 11 without a student ID. He was asked to leave, and did not do so in a timely manner, so UCPD was called in. This video seems to start a little while after the initial confrontation. Who knows how he acted to the cops initially. And as any decent officer will tell you, treat them with respect, and they'll show the same. I'm sure this guy didn't, based off of my next point...
• "DON'T. TOUCH. ME. Don't touch me. Don't touch me." while being escorted out of the building. That's just dumb. If an officer has his hand on you to escort you out, you need to just relax and be escorted out. Don't insult him, or pull away and tell him to not touch you. Put yourself in the mind of the officer, here. This guy is being uncooperative, and keeps trying to pull away from you. He's not in cuffs at this point (as far as I can tell in the video) so who knows if he has any weapons he could reach for, etc.
• The Taser is used, and he screams "I have a medical condition! Here's your patriot act! Here's your fucking abuse of power! I'm not fighting you! I said I would leave! I said... I... WOULD... LEAVE. I got tased for no reason.. I was leaving this god-forsaken place, you stopped me, you're abusing your power. Here's your justice.." Yeah, you were really complying when you were yelling at the officers and pulling away from them, genius. And way to make this a patriot act issue-- that's just odd. Kind of like you wanted to make a scene? Hrm. As for the medical condition comment, what medical condition keeps you from complying with the officers? Is it something breathing-related? Because you seem to be having no problem screaming yourself hoarse.
• And what happens when the officers tell him to stand up? He tells them to fuck off. Wrong move, buddy. That's just disrespectful! And would it have been so hard to get up? I am reading all over the web that people claim that being tased immobilizes you for minutes, and you can't stand up or anything. I happen to know a sheriff deputy who has been tased (and has tased others) and knows this claim is bogus. Most officers go through training and get tased themselves so they know exactly what it does to the body and how it feels. Go ahead and do a search on YouTube for "taser" (and no, a stungun is not a taser.) Watch how quickly people can recover once the juice is done.
• If you're not in the know, a taser fires two "dart" type projectiles with barbs on the end that try and catch the person's clothing or skin. These darts have long wires connected to them (that stay in the ammo pack in the gun) that deliver the actual shock to the person. Once a taser is fired, and the probes are stuck in someone, as long as the trigger is held down, a cycle occurs: the initial shock is sent (several seconds) and then several 1.8 second bursts are sent. The initial shock is going to make your muscles and body involuntarily tense up. The follow up shocks are going to keep you from ripping the probes off your body. Anyhow. Update: There are reports that the taser was used in "drive-stun" mode, which is the secondary-fire essentially of a taser, where the front of the taser is pressed directly against the subject, no probes involved. This causes localized pain in the area being hit, but does not incapacitate like a full taser probe-hit would. This doesn't really change anything in my opinion, and makes an even greater case for him being able to still physically comply with the demands.
• People constantly criticize the police's use of taser weapons. What-- you'd rather they had used lethal force in those cases? I hate to break it to you, but your odds of taking a taser hit and surviving 100% undamaged are waaaay better than having a police officer shoot you. As most police forces train to shoot-to-kill (and not to "wound"), I find the non-lethal approach a good stopping/compliance method for police to employ.
• The people crowding around didn't help this particular situation, and I'm sure that's why quite a few more police officers showed up to calm the scene. And of course they keep yelling they want badge numbers, etc.-- what would they do with them anyway? They could request a copy of the police report and get them that way, as well. This isn't some undercover operation, or anything. Sheesh. I'm reading on many blogs that the general sentiment is that the crowd should have overpowered the police and protected this suspect. Hah.

In general, I agree with the amount of force deployed/shown in the video. If the suspect had just cooperated from the start, none of that would have happened. And don't try to turn this into a racial/Islam issue, ugh.

Update: Michelle Malkin picked up on the story, and got some feedback from an officer.

Police officers that attempt to match a person’s resistance with the same amount of force all to often end up in litigation or dead.