EDITORIAL – Police wrong to Tase Florida student

There are certain times when it’s appropriate to Tase – and times when it’s inappropriate to… There are certain times when it’s appropriate to Tase – and times when it’s inappropriate to Tase. And in the case of Andrew Meyer, a University of Florida student who was Tased after repeatedly trying to ask Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., questions during a campus forum, police went too far.

The incident began after Meyer was asked, and refused, to leave the microphone when his allotted time was up at a University-sponsored question-and-answer session with the senator Monday night.

In videos that surfaced on the web in the days after the incident, Meyers was shown loudly and argumentatively asking Kerry about impeaching President Bush and whether the two had been members of the secret society Skull and Bones when they were at Yale.

Midway through his question, Meyer was asked to wrap it up, but he continued to interrogate the senator. Meyer’s microphone was then turned off and university police tried to pull him away. As the officers took Meyer by the arms, Kerry could be overheard saying, “That’s all right, let me answer his question.”

As a group of police officers pushed him to the ground, Meyer is overheard insisting that he will walk out of the auditorium if the officers let him go. The officers then Tased Meyer and dragged him out of the auditorium.

Following the incident, Meyer was arrested on charges of resisting an officer and disturbing the peace and spent a night in jail, according to an ABC News report.

The incident set off a storm on Florida’s campus and across the country, with many claiming that the police used aggressive force in restraining Meyer. Members of Florida’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union have called the incident “disturbing.”

The University has launched an internal investigation of the incident, and ultimately, a courtroom might have the final say.

While many have made this a case of free speech rights, the issue is really over whether or not police took the appropriate actions in Tasing Meyers. Meyer’s free speech was not infringed upon. He made the decision to volunteer a question at a forum where participants were restricted to a time limit. And when his time was up and he persisted his questioning, police had every right to ask him to sit down.

Chances are that the police reaction was a partial response to the tone in which Meyer interrogated Kerry. Meyer, a journalism student who is known for posting videos of practical jokes on his website, was trying to make a scene. In the videos of the incident, he is noticeably – and unnecessarily- antagonistic toward Kerry, and it appears that the university police were trying to do their best to protect the senator and maintain security – until they made the decision to force Meyer to the ground and Tase him.

While Meyer was outspoken, he was posing no real threat to Kerry or the crowd, and he was volunteering to handle the dispute in a non-aggressive manner. Yet, the officers chose to handle the incident in front of the crowd and with brute force, almost as if they were showing students what happens when they decide to speak out.

It is important for police to maintain order, particularly in university settings, but it is also their role to make students feel protected. Legally, it’s hard to say whether the officers were in the wrong, but from the standpoint of college students, it is incredibly alarming to see a student handled by university police in this manner.

For the sake of Meyers and students around the country, we hope that the University of Florida dismisses the officers who handled the incident.