Eat Taser, book boy!

Via Boing Boing comes this (literally) shocking tale of a student tasered twice by campus police in the library at UCLA in front of other shocked students. Coming some months after BB reported on another set of campus police who wanted to haul in a student in English who wrote a horror story for DNA testing because if he wrote about gruesome death he obviously must be a murderer himself, then threatened him and supporting tutors when they told the rentacop campus rozzers they had no right, it does make me wonder what campus police are actually for? Certainly doesn't seem to be to serve the interests of the student body. I imagine many have issues because they couldn't make it as real police officers and bossing around students and posing with weapons in front of 20 year old undergrads seemed like a great way to pick up totty...

To show amends for their over-zealous behaviour in twice tasering an unarmed student in a library the officers are then alleged to have threatened other horrified students who asked them to stop or for their badge numbers; perhaps they thought they were all terrorists. Still, it is a real advancement for American campuses - back in the days of protesting Vietnam they'd probably have been shot (I wish that was one of my jokes, but it isn't - Warren Ellis had it spot on in Transmetropolitan). Thank goodness we don't have these over-zealous and incompetent numpties on campuses here; when I worked in the college library the worst that would happen was a librarian tut-tutting when a book was returned late... Nice to see the spirit of freedom of speech is still celebrated in the halls of learning in the Land of the Free and that libraries are still a haven of quiet learning.