And I'm fucking sorry, but if I'm doing nothing but asking a question at a forum designed for that and someone puts their hands on me, you bet your ass I'm going to resist as well. This is the US, not fucking China.
Your perception of doing nothing wrong and what police/security see as a potential red flag/threat are two totally different views.
Rude and loud is enough to come off as such with a high profile public figure in the area... Even in a local bar, this is enough to be seen as someone worthy of being asked to leave, or have the establishment's security remove them. I've worked clubs down here as I'm sure most of my good friends are aware of, you don't take chances with the safety of your patrons or people in general...
If they're trying to restrain you to assess the situation and sort out wtf is really going on and you resist you just look like that much more of a threat to be neutralized.
If the kid posed no honest threat and calmed himself down a bit, who's to say the police wouldn't have escorted his happy ass back up to the mic and let him finish?
You're damn right it's the US.
But that's no excuse to parade around like you can do anything you want.
If I went around parading like an asshole down the street and a cop saw me and I refused to yield and let them know what was going on, they've every right to see what CAN happen and restrain/detain me.
Plain and simple, it's already high profile having Kerry there.
With what's been going on, you think a college-level student would have been smart enough to take into account the happenings at Virginia Tech and maybe approached this better.
He didn't, so he got tased.
Also just because Kerry wanted to hear/answer the question, DOES NOT supercede the potential safety issue at hand with this dipshit kid.
I wholeheartedly agree that people can say whatever they want and shouldn't be penalized for it in this manner(being tased), but the kid conducted himself rather inappropriately and was put down.
Cause you know, it's nice to say whatever we like; but I prefer my personal safety over listening to some pissed off kid who for all I know could be tweaking at his last moment of life trying to figure out whether to detonate the bomb that might be on his chest or pull out his automatic weapon and get gunned down by cops meeting certain/near-certain death. (Yes, extreme example... But you tell me it can't happen and I've got nothing for you but a facepalm.)
Simply put, the police may have jumped the gun pulling the wanker off the stage, but the second he started resisting instead of taking the handcuffs so he could calmly talk to the LEOs on-site and prove that he was no threat to Kerry or the crowd, he committed what is it, a felony? WHILE making the police look justified in taking him down for acting as the threat they perceived him to be.
The kid was probably harmless and was sportin' his attitude, but we've all got our different points of view to account for and with high profile public figures and being a LEO there to protect them and the crowd, better to err on the side of majority safety than to err on the side of minority "rights." If the kid was a threat and wound up capping Kerry or another crowd member, the cops would've gotten just as much shit for NOT doing their job. At least Meyer seemed to be big enough to just stow it and admit the cops were just trying to do their job.
Maybe he can make something of the situation and find a spot on a popular talk show and drag his questions out further or find a public televised forum with Kerry with some other students to PROPERLY address him with a degree of civility.
