UCLA taser incident update

[eeeniebean]

Inspired by the taser incident in florida, I decided to check up on the UCLA taser incident from last year (click the link for my original livejournal entry with references to the youtube videos and news articles)
It appears there have been some interesting developments (research all yoinked from the incident's wikipedia entryFirst of all - the

Comments

[invertedsky]

So the student was not prosecuted for anything at all, just tortured?

prosecutorial discretion

[eeeniebean]

Essentially yes - and I point it out to show the terrible irony here.

That said, it's not that unusual for police to have the right to arrest people who the prosecutor may then choose not to prosecute.
It's about burdens of proof. The police only have to have probable cause for arrest, but the prosecutor is not supposed to bring suit unless they believe they can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Plus, there's a lot of leeway in prosecutorial discretion in making decisions about resources, etc. I just don't want to give the impression that there is (or even supposed to be) a 1:1 ratio between arrests and prosecutions.

But to your point, yeah - I find it horrifying that this kid got tasered several times and brought to the station.. put through all this for something the prosecutor wasn't even interested in prosecuting.

Re: prosecutorial discretion

[invertedsky]

These days the biggest broken piece in the judicial system is the cops themselves. They can act as prosecutor, judge and jury, and carry out a sentence of torture with impunity. The internal investigations always side with the police.

The same thing here with the guy who was killed by a taser. The internal investigation turned up nothing improper, even though the victim was not armed and was not threatening anybody. The coroner said he had a heart condition that was exacerbated by the electric shock. But the point that has continually been missed is that he shouldn't have been tasered to begin with.

[lord_reynaldo]

Excessive force is one thing... but trying to invoke ADA in relation to an arrest is quite another! That's employment law, so I don't see how that could ever fly.

[eeeniebean]

ADA is not solely an employment law. That's where it is mainly used, but it's not limited to that