The very definition of a facist state

Seriously, America, you don’t see that this is everything that we don’t want to be, that this is everything we are supposed to stand against?

A_B has good commentary on his blog, as well as links to other places with good commentary.

The biggest issues for me are:

• Do people honestly think it was ‘necessary force’ to use a taser repeatedly on a guy who was already handcuffed and only physically resisting to the degree that he was lying down on the ground and didn’t get up? Did he pose a physical threat to the three or four cops that were there? They couldn’t just take him to the station? It appears from the video and the shouting that they tasered him NOT because he was a physical threat but because he didn’t stand when they said stand. The implications of this being ok in a non-police state is tremendous.
• What were they arresting him for initially? He was leaving, as requested, by the time the cops arrived. If what he was in violation of was not leaving, and then he was leaving, isn’t that ok? Why *did* they put their hands on him? Do people believe you should be allowed to be physically contacted by police when you are not being arrested?

Frankly, maybe I wouldn’t have screamed the stuff the guy did if I were him. But let’s say my name was Mostafa and I had the “wrong” skin color for the times. Given the types of laws that have been passed and the kinds of stories about detainment I’ve heard recently, and that they seemed to want to arrest me solely for having forgotten my student ID when I really do go to the school, I’d be terrified of what could happen if I was taken somewhere with no witnesses. So maybe I would try to get the attention of the people around me.

After the first tasering, it would just be abject terror that was operating at that point.