University of Florida Student tasered at John Kerry speech

I'm not sure what I think about this...what do you all think?

When the police ask you to leave, it is in your best interest to leave. When several police grab you and start dragging you out, you had better leave. This guy is lucky he only got the taser. The police have few other options when someone becomes belligerent.

The student was purposefully trying to cause trouble. He should have never been allowed in. If anything, the police's mistake was giving him a large enough gap that he was able to slip past them in the first place.

Yeah, he was really asking for it.  The only problem I have with the way the police handled it is that they waited until after he was already pinning to the floor and handcuffed to taser him.  Still, if you try to get arrested on purpose and then resist arrest, you can't really complain about any methods of coercion the police might use.

The more times I see this video, the more I think the police were completely out of line.  As far as I can tell, the only reason they had for dragging him out of the room was because he was taking too long to ask his question.  I'm not sure he was even "resisting arrest," either, since they surely weren't going to arrest him just for talking too much.  So then they tackle him, hold him down, and taser him in a room full of people while he screams and begs them to stop?!  WTF?!

After getting more facts, I think the kid completely deserved to get arrested...maybe not tasered, but definitely arrested.

The information that I have found states that he was outside the forum being loud and disruptive before entering the forum. Then he disregarded the policies and procedures that were set up for the forum by going to the mic to ask his question after the time alloted for questions was over. John Kerry, trying to be nice, asked the mic to be turned on so he could answer the question...this is where the video begins.

Now, I speculate that eventhough Kerry wanted to take the question, a forum official instructed the officers to remove the student...but like I said this is just my speculation.

It doesn't really matter why the officers were removing him. What does is that he reisisted an officer. From what I could see, the officers were just going to remove him...until he started to make a scene and resist. That's when I saw the cuffs come out.

I think this kid went into the forum planning on making a scene, but probably not by getting arrested and tasered. I could tell from the begining of his "question" that he was not interested in hearing Kerry's response. He just wanted to make his point.

If he would have just stayed outside of the forum, we would be talking like pirates today instead of discussing "the tasered UF student."

I think it does matter why they were removing him, though.  Before he resisted the officers, they had no reason to arrest him.  Shouting at a forum is not illegal, unless you are shouting threats.  Ranting about political issues is not illegal on a public college campus, no matter when the forum ended.  

I agree that it looks like the guy was trying to make a scene, but the police should have been responsible enough to not escalate it that far.  And no one should ever be tasered by police after they have already been subdued, no matter what they did to get arrested.  Even if he had pulled a gun and started shooting people right there, what the officers did would still have been inappropriate.  If the police are starting to dole out punishment as they see fit, we no longer live in a free country.

I completely agree that if he was truely subdued then he should never have been tasered. I couldn't see well enough on the video to tell if he was subdued or not. I personally do not think he was subdued for a couple of reasons. First, I could still see him pushing the officers away. Second, he was shouting that he would just walk out if they let him. Of course, this was after he refused to leave quietly. I believe the officers did their jobs and there was no "police brutality" like the girl was shouting at the end of the video. Come on...it was nearly two minutes from the time the student started resisting until he got tasered. That's not the point I was trying to make, though.

My point is that before he started to make a scene and resist the officers, they were only going to remove him, not arrest him (based on what I saw). A person can be removed from a public place for a myriad of reasons that aren't illegal.

Oh, and if he started shooting people right there...the police should've put as many bullets in him as it took to put him down.