Please keep a video camera handy so we can all witness it the next time, when you take on a group of armed police officers in the name of civil rights. We will all make some popcorn and watch it on YouTube. It will be a howler, no doubt.

And to all the Americans living overseas who have posted saying that they will NEVER return to the USA after witnessing this: We will try, somehow, to get along without you. It won't be easy, but somehow, as a nation, we will make it.

This is what the video age has brought us to, and there's no going back. Society will never be the same now that things that have occurred without video documentation for hundreds or thousands of years are now broadcast to everyone on the Internet. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone thinks that theirs matters. Well it doesn't. Not even mine. But especially not yours.

I live in New York too. On the Long Island Rail Road, if you don't have a ticket they ask you to get off at the next stop. If you refuse they call the cops. If you refuse the cop's request to get off, they drag you off. I imagine if you fought them enough, they'd taser you and arrest you.

Regarding the re-post of the comment from "a student who was there".

Here's one of his follow-ups:

"By the way, UCLA is filled with hippie/hipster Che Guevara t-shirt wearing down with capitalism spewing faggots, so because of this there is a protest organized in the middle of our busiest walk-through on campus at 12 pm tomorrow."

I suppose what's most disturbing about this "witness" and his compatriots who have posted here, is their sincere admiration of thuggishness. I guess it's a helluva lot less complicated to side with the brutes. Safer too if you don't want to get tased.

But given a choice between thugs and jerks, I find myself rooting for the jerks every time.

[Rosa Parks] Could have caused a lot less fuss by just getting up and moving to the back of the bus. Hey, it was the law. I bet if you'd seen the video of her you would have thought she was being pretty stroppy too.

Seriously? Look, not all acts of civil disobedience are equal. Worst analogy ever.

And to those worrying about the lack of compassion in even the posts who object to the tasing, please tell me why I should feel compassion for this guy? Why can I not feel that both parties were in error but that the tasering is by far the more important issue at hand?

I don't feel an ounce of compassion for this jackass, but I'm outraged that cops are using tasers as incentive. This is a dangerous precedence, and I hope the jackass wins his lawsuit.

Faulty analogy. On the LIRR, they don't ask for ID, which is what happened in the library. Asking for a ticket is different, because everyone on the train is asked to show their ticket, regardless of ethnicity. I'm talking about whether or not this student was racially profiled, and asked for ID based on his appearance... while others were not asked for theirs. ID is not the same as a ticket. Being asked for a ticket on a train is more like being asked for your library card before borrowing a book in the library. An equal-opportunity, non-discriminatory request.

And getting back to the train, I'm sure it wouldn't take four men and an electrocution device to get someone off a train. Or out of a library. Unless of course it was being done for the sheer sadistic pleasure of exerting power.

Not immediately complying with a request shouldn't result in beating and electrocution in a free society. I'd hate to put my feet up on the seat in any movie theater in which you're working as an usher.

If someone is offering passive, non-aggressive resistance, the appropriate response is to bodily pick up the suspect and carry him outside. For the UCLA police to taser someone for only being verbally abusive is unacceptable.

Someone here asked (paraphrasing), “What would you do if you were the police?” Well first off, you try to keep things calm by setting an example of responding in a calm, formal, rational way. You outline, quietly and firmly, the campus policy of showing an ID when requested. You rationally and calmly outline the consequences of not complying with your request, by stating as a simple fact he will be subject to arrest. There is no need to shout or use a threatening tone of voice. Your authority is already expressed by your uniform; it speaks for itself.

Some have said (again paraphrasing), “He could be anyone hopped up on drugs.” Let’s apply some common sense. You are not dealing with someone on the street, you are in a library. This person had already been there for a while, probably for at least an hour or two. Chances are Mostafa had books out to study. It should be pretty easy to size up someone and decide if he was there to study or not, even if he wasn’t a student. But I seriously doubt anyone present thought he wasn’t a UCLA student.

We don’t know why Mostafa was on a rant about the Patriot Act, etc. Perhaps he was treated rudely when demanded ID by campus security before the police were called. If Mostafa was simply angry at his treatment (which seems to have been the case), speaking in a calm, rational voice should elicit a similar response after a few minutes. If it doesn’t, only then can you speculate other possible factors are causing him to behave irrationally, be it illegal drugs, low blood sugar, a prescription wearing off, mental problems, whatever.

I do know this: Responding to someone who is already angry by becoming angry yourself is not going to improve the situation.

And let’s be clear about Assault and Battery. Assault is when you verbally threaten someone with violence. Battery is the follow-through, when you actually do violence. For the police to threaten a bystander with tasering simply because he/she asked for a badge number is Assault. This can hardly be characterized as professional behavior.