Lazarus Austin is a junior majoring in history. He can be contacted at [email protected].After last week’s incident at the University of Florida, people are still debating whether the police had any right to arrest Andrew Meyer or use a Taser on him for ostensibly “disturbing the peace.”
The issue is not a free speech issue, nor is it an issue of whether they should have used the Taser. It is an issue about trigger-happy authority figures abusing their power.
Yes, Meyer was a little too loud and disrespectful, but he was not threatening or disruptive. Yes, optimally, free speech should be done in a civilized manner, but it doesn’t always work out that way.
If the police officers had had a few more seconds of patience, Meyer would have finished asking his questions. On the video, after Meyer asks his first question, he says he has two more questions, but just as he finishes his third question, he is arrested.
The police officers were the ones who “disrupted” the public forum, not Meyer.
While Meyer was being arrested, Kerry implored the police officers to let him answer the kid’s question.
“I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption,” Kerry said, according to a CNN report.
But people who are in authority positions tend to exert that authority simply for the sake of exerting it, even when they don’t need to.
In addition to arresting Meyer, the police charged the student with resisting arrest with “violence.” How was he resisting with violence? Is avoidance violence? Did he hit one of the police officers or point a gun at one of them?
After the police had escorted Meyer from the room and both sides were calmed down, Meyer asked for the umpteenth time why he had been arrested. The police officers’ response: he was “inciting a riot.” All I can say is this: Ridiculous.
Personally, I admire him for standing up for himself. On the other hand, I do not think he did it in the proper way, but I have to give him credit for resisting an illegal arrest.
Unfortunately, abuse of power happens all too often when police officers pull over the wrong car for speeding, when politicians have too much time on their hands and when people do not know how to do their job.
People get arrested for not wearing their seat belts, for speeding too much, for public sex and wearing sagging pants.
On the other hand, murderers get out of jail with only a few years, and criminals who are rich practically have get-out-of-jail-free cards. And people complain about our jails being too full?
Critics also claim that he was rambling and yelling and that he took too long to ask his question.
However, despite how poorly he may have done it, there was a “method to his madness” (purely a figure of speech). As he said after he was interrupted by the police the first time, he was “prefacing his question.” Can we arrest him for not articulating very well? Should I be arrested because I am taking more space on this newspaper with my article than I should?
Five more seconds, and all of this probably would have been avoided. Meyer would have finished asking his question. But if he hadn’t and just kept rambling, then the police would have had every right to escort him from the podium, but they still should have let him go, not arrest him and charge him with a crime.