GAINESVILLE, Fla. - A university student with a history of taping his own practical jokes was Tasered by campus police and arrested after loudly and repeatedly trying to ask U.S. Sen. John Kerry questions during a campus forum.
Andrew Meyer, 21, spent a night in jail before his release from jail Tuesday morning on his own recognizance. He had no comment when he left. His attorney, Robert Griscti, did not return messages seeking comment.
Videos of the Monday night incident, posted on several Web sites and played repeatedly on television news, show University of Florida police officers pulling Meyer away from the microphone after he asks Kerry about impeaching President Bush and whether he and Bush were both members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University.
University spokesman Steve Orlando said Meyer was asked to leave the microphone after his allotted time was up. Meyer can be seen refusing to walk away and getting upset that the microphone was cut off.
As two officers take Meyer by the arms, Kerry, D-Mass., can be heard saying, “That’s all right, let me answer his question.”
Audience members applaud, and Meyer struggles for several seconds as up to four officers try to remove him from the room. Meyer screams for help and tries to break away from officers with his arms flailing at them, then is forced to the ground and officers order him to stop resisting.
As Kerry tells the audience he will answer the student’s “very important question,” Meyer yells at the officers to release him, crying out, “Don’t Tase me, bro,” just before he is shocked by the Taser. He is then led from the room, screaming, “What did I do?” President calls situation ‘regretful’
Meyer was arrested on charges of resisting an officer and disturbing the peace, according to Alachua County jail records, but the State Attorney’s Office had yet to make the formal charging decision. Police recommended charges of resisting arrest with violence, a felony, and disturbing the peace and interfering with school administrative functions, a misdemeanor.
University President J. Bernard Machen issued a statement Tuesday saying he requested the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the arrest. Officials said it would determine whether the officers used an appropriate level of force.
Machen called the situation “regretful” in an afternoon news conference and said two officers involved in the incident were placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the probe.
Uhhhhhh… does the university president know the difference between “regretful” and “regrettable” ? Now that’s regrettable.
The good thing is that this was all over the news today, and folks were raising a significant outcry.
The bad news is that the majority of the sheeple don’t give a damn and probably think the kid deserved it. Unless it relates to Britney or Paris, of course.
We have the right to say whatever we want, but that doesn’t protect us from what the government does AFTER we speak.
We have the right to bear arms, but the government doesn’t have to provide us with arms.
Freedom of speech & the right to bear arms are both rights the 10 amendments give us, so they are in essence, privileges. Privileges can be revoked if abused.
That kid had it coming. There are better things to fight for and better ways to standup for yourself. Getting in authorities face is only going to get your face slapped…that’s the reality and you better face it! He seemed like a smart upstanding chap…should have been more sneaky in his approach of getting his message across.
If thats how the American Government treats its own people, when it is crusading around the world in the name of freedom and democracy, then its no wonder the Iraqis and Afghans are to busy killing each other, after all its freedom and democracy right.
They have a word for this its is ‘Hypocracy’ and that rhymes with democracy.
The Bush government is a crusader army and has NO right to force its beliefs on others, when it cant even protect the rights and beliefs of its own people.
Who needs freedom and democracy… we got the internet dudes, we are the revolution… united we stand and divided we fall…
And in the words of a great man (Alice Cooper) ‘No more mr Nice Guy’
Mmmmmmm… police reports are famous for their objectivity… especially when potential charges against the actors include the ones writing the reports… my father was an attorney in a police brutality case, the police officer was accused of pistol whipping the detainee, fracturing his skull… sooooo… one of the legal team put the officer on the witness stand for cross examination, and then pulled a human skull out of a paper bag and set it on the bar in front of the witness stand, and asked the officer to remove his pistol and strike the skull with approximately the same force he hit the detainee. Unknkown to the officer, the skull was already broken in many places and held together with a weak glue. The officer takes out his gun and lightly taps the skull, my dad said like he was putting a tack in a picture frame… however, this being a trick skull, it falls to pieces anyway, and the officer is sitting there with a horrified, dumbfounded look on his face… one bad turn deserves another…
