The big problem here was there seemed to be a lack of organization and proper authority and this was probably evident from the start. Event planners of things like this need to have a standard protocol of crowd control and emergency situations and of what to in case things like this happen. First, there needs to be someone who is the "presenter" who is in charge and introduces Kerry. It's not the speaker's job to do crowd control. Then there would have been to have two mikes one on each side of the auditorium and the in charge person tells the crowd that their mike time was limited to 5 minutes or 3 questions, etc.

The minute the dude started to ramble off and did not sit down, the person in charge who was running the thing informs him his time is up, OFF goes that mike and the person at the other starts their question. If the dude starts screaming the person in charge goes over and starts to talk to him, telling him "look your time is done, please be considerate of others, etc." If the dude kept screaming, this person would tell him. "if it continues the campus police will take you outside and not let you back in. If you try and get back in, you will be arrested." THEN the police come over and HANDCUFF the guy right there and then. Handcuffing him right then and there would have made it so much easier to get him out the door and they never would have had to taser him.

The point is, it is never the speaker who in charge of these things (so sorry it's not Kerry's responsibility here) but a designated person in charge who tells the crowd from beginning how questions and answers are going to go and what will not be tolerated. A crowd when told the NORMS for a presentation probably wouldn't have tolerated this and probably would have yelled to the guy to sit down and boo'd the guy out the door if he kept it up. The school or university should insist that organizations that put stuff on like this have a designated plan of action for what to do in these cases. Properly organized events with a RECOGNIZABLE authority figure other than the speaker have less of these types of problems. In addition, lack of that organization and authority figure is really putting the crowd and the speaker at risk.

As it is this thing looked totally unorganized and chaotic. Things obviously got out of control fast and people in the crowd and Kerry probably didn't know what to do or say. In addition, the police didn't really have a good idea of how to handle the guy from the get go. Tasering him was stupid and unnecessary and a sign of how badly trained they were or prepared of how to handle this situation. If they had handcuffed him from the start, they could have been able to move him out of th auditorium fast and this would have been a minor footnote.

Sorry, I watched the whole video.

http://video.nbc6.net/player/?id=157250#videoid=157250

I don't believe this guy was tasered at ALL. The cop actually says he was never tasered. After the guy screams he has been tasered (ow, ow, ow!) he WALKS out of the room (they don't carry him) all the while SCREAMING his head off. Wow, not very effective tasering! Everything I have read about being tasered the person isn't doing too much. Then he goes on screaming that the cops are going to take him away and KILL him. Personally, at this point he was making a huge scene it seemed just to get attention including making the accusation of being tasered.

Now, while his questions reach a belligerent level towards Kerry (he never takes a breath long enough to let Kerry even begin answering him) I do not believe the cops should have grabbed him at the point they did. It's very likely he would have calmed down and let Kerry finally get the chance to answer. So perhaps this was clearly an overreaction by the campus police.

On the other hand, maybe the police felt he was reaching a level of hysteria that he was going to try and harm Kerry. You know, especially after Virgina Tech, if this guy had brought in some type of weapon and if students in the crowd or Kerry were hurt or killed, we'd be bitching about about a whole other subject here. So, maybe the police thought better safe that sorry.

Sure, freedom of speech and being able to confront a political figure should never be impaired (like anyone's had the chance to do this to Bush!) but I also think doing it in a reasonable nonhysterical manner that doesn't raise the question of safety and security of the people in the crowd or the speaker is not asking too much.