08/13/2007 - National Legal News

A police accountability expert hired by the University of California, Los Angeles has concluded that campus police used excessive force in a November 14, 2006, incident involving the repeated stunning of a student with a Taser device.

U.C.L.A. student Mostafa Tabatabainejad, 23, was stunned repeatedly in the school library after refusing to produce identification during a routine I.D. check by campus police. During the initial police investigation, Tabatabainejad, of Iranian descent, stated that he assumed he was being racially profiled and refused to submit to the officers’ request. The incident was captured on a number of students’ cell phone cameras and later posted on the Internet.

Police accountability investigator Merrick Bobb was asked by university officials to look further into the original incident investigation, made by the U.C.L.A. Police Department, which concluded that the officers did not breach campus policies during their exchange with Tabatabainejad.

Contradicting the original investigation’s findings, Bobb stated in his report that the officers employed excessive force when they used their stun devices to subdue Tabatabainejad.

The report suggests that both the university and its police department re-evaluate their policies on the use of Taser devices, offering recommendations that include: clarifying what constitutes a violent or aggressive subject, limiting the use of Taser devices to individuals that fit the agreed upon description, prohibiting the use of stun devices on individuals who do not display the behaviors that denote a violent or aggressive subject, and making clear those circumstances in which an officer should brandish his Taser device.

As a result of the altercation, Tabatabainejad has filed a lawsuit alleging that U.C.L.A. and its police department violated his civil rights.