A University of Florida student, Andrew Meyer, had to be subdued with a taser because he didn't know when to stop talking at a John Kerry forum despite the fact there were 4-5 police officers who could have just dragged his loud mouth, by the mouth, out of the auditorium. They could have dragged him by the other end as well. It sounded like that was where the noise was coming from anyway.
Extreme...maybe.
From the dailykos:
"I was at the Kerry speech today, sitting 2 rows away from all the action. I'll let you know how it really went down.
The forum was going to be over at 2 pm, and Kerry spoke for so long that the Q and A portion had to be shortened. He only got through about 7 of the 50 people who were waiting to ask questions. While the final question was being read, some douchebag ran down the aisle, grabbed the mic from the other side of the room, interrupted the kid who was talking, and started yelling at Kerry, demanding that his questions be heard. He started ranting about how Kerry talks in circles or something, and everyone was getting annoyed. The cops are all over him in no time and try to escort him out, but he starts yelling and resisting. Kerry insists that they let him stay and even agrees to answer his question.
After the interrupted guy's question was answered, Kerry keeps his promise and lets the angry guy talk. This is the point where people started taking their cameras and phones out. All the videos floating around youtube start around here. You can see in the videos that his questioning gets kind of inappropriate, so somebody cut his mic. Instead of shutting up, he starts yelling and making an even bigger scene. He struggled all the way up the aisle, and started violently trying to free himself. They threatened to taze him and he wouldnt stop fighting, so he got tazed. They only had to arrest him because he was causing a disruption and wouldn't leave peacefully. He wasn't being silenced for asking tough questions, trust me.
It's a shame that they had to taze the guy, but he had a chance to calm down and didn't take it. He probably didn't pose a physical threat to anybody in the room, but someone can't just hijack the floor of a forum like that and expect not to get kicked out. This wasn't some poor guy who was brutalized for trying to ask some tough questions. He's just an obnoxious guy who had a fit when there wasn't time for his questions and refused to be calm even when he was given the chance to speak. He was looking for trouble, and everyone applauded when he was forced to leave.
Nothing pisses me off more than hearing stories about power tripping cops abusing their power, unnecessarily tazing or arresting people, etc. It's a huge problem and I'm glad it's being discussed. Just don't mistake this for one of those cases."
Extreme? Maybe...but in this case...maybe not.
What do you think?
See also
Andrew Meyer Has a History of Controversy
Have you ever heard of checking your sources? any one of the ten videos of what happened that day will contradict over half of your "source"'s statements. Some of the videos run all the way from 1 minute prior to meyer taking the mike, to a few seconds after meyer actually being put in the car. your source is bogus and was likely not at the event at all.
Posted by: EHK | September 18, 2007 5:09 PM | Permalink to Comment