Campus police officers at the University of California at Los Angeles used excessive force and poor judgment last November when they repeatedly used a Taser stun gun to subdue a student, according to an independent report released on Wednesday.
UCLA officials commissioned the independent investigation in response to the controversy that ensued after police officers used a Taser on Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a student of Iranian descent who refused to show his student identification card in the computer laboratory at a campus library.
Immediately after the incident, Mr. Tabatabainejad publicly accused the campus police of racial profiling, and more than 400 students participated in a protest. Further fueling the controversy was a widely publicized video of the incident posted on Youtube.com.
The independent report, “A Bad Night At Powell Library: The Events of November 14, 2006,” found no evidence that the incident was racially motivated, but it concluded that the police officers’ actions were “substantially out of proportion to the provocation.”
An internal investigation conducted by the UCLA police department, however, came to the opposite conclusion. Though the findings of that investigation are kept private by law, Karl Ross, the UCLA police chief, said that the officers involved had not violated any policies and would not be disciplined.
But Mr. Ross does plan to revise the police department’s use-of-force policy, as recommended in the independent report. The current protocol for using Taser stun guns at UCLA is out of line with the guidelines used by other police departments, according to the report, which was written by Merrick Bobb, a lawyer who specializes in police-misconduct investigations, and two co-authors.
Norman Abrams, who was the chancellor of UCLA until July 31, endorsed the recommendations made in Mr. Bobb’s 117-page report, including one stating that police should use Tasers only on violent or aggressive subjects, and not on passively resistant subjects like Mr. Tabatabainejad.
“Changing the policy is an urgent goal, and we hope to have new guidelines in place by the beginning of the fall semester,” said Mr. Ross, the police chief. “Ideally, when this is all said and done, we’d like to have a model policy for the use of Tasers on a college campus.”
The report may also affect the status of the lawsuit Mr. Tabatabainejad filed in January, according to his lawyer, Paul Hoffman. Mr. Tabatabainejad is suing the officers at the scene and Chief Ross, accusing them of battery, excessive force, and negligence. He is also suing UCLA and its police department under the Americans With Disabilities Act, basing his discrimination allegations on his diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
“I’m happy the report includes thoughtful recommendations on how UCLA can change its policies,” said Mr. Hoffman. “In the first hearing for this case, the defendants made it clear in their comments to the judge that if the report criticized the police officers’ actions, it could very well form a substantial basis for a settlement in this case. ... It probably makes sense for the parties to talk about that.”
The civil trial is scheduled to begin in February 2008.
Background articles from The Chronicle: