From The Miami Herald:
Andrew Meyer, the University of Florida student who was Tasered by campus police in September, may have staged the disturbance in an effort to disrupt the political forum at the Gainesville campus, a state police report concludes.
The report from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, released Wednesday by the university, cleared UF police of wrongdoing in subduing Meyer, 21. Meyer, of Weston, was subdued with a Taser after he resisted arrest during a speech by 2004 Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John Kerry on Sept. 17.
Meyer, whose cry of ”Don’t Tase me Bro‘!” made him a cause célèbre on the Internet, declined to comment Wednesday. He has been charged with disrupting a public event and resisting arrest. The state attorney’s office has not yet decided whether to prosecute.
Whether Meyer will face criminal charges for resisting arrest and causing a disturbance will be determined soon, officials said.
Good. Tase him again. And up the voltage next time. The idiot was breaking the law, disrupting a private assembly, attacking officers, resisting, disobeying police commands.
Meyer is a serial attention seeker, through aggressively opinionated newspaper columns, through videos on his own Web site, through videotaped pranks and stand-up comedy.
Andrew Meyer. Not a free speech hero. Fail, bro’.
Andrew Meyer, Don’t Tase me Bro
2 responses so far ↓
1 Sisyphus39 // Oct 30, 2007 at 12:56 am
Please rethink. Being a “serial attention seeker” by any of the means you mention doesn’t eliminate his rights. Meyer broke no law, did not disrupt the assembly, and his reflexes upon being attacked by the police were certainly within the bounds of normal behavior.
The problem was outside those parameters entirely. The arrest (Miranda rights?) and tasering were outrageous responses to his being a dissident and to his questions.
His attempt to open up a subject that is stonewalled by the media and government called for just such action.
This is a bad time to go about supporting a police state!
I reiterate. Please rethink.
2 Shamalama // Oct 30, 2007 at 9:21 am
Sisyphus39, I differ in opinion.
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or the right of the people peaceably to assemble. But Andrew Meyer has absolutely no protected rights on the University of Florida campus. The First Amendment only restricts the federal government, no one else. Therefore Andrew Meyer has no “rights” in this situation.
Andrew Meyer did not peaceably assemble. He asked questions, but only after breaking the line, and literally pushing someone away from the microphone, so that he, apparently, could get in the rant he so desperately desired. He did not wait for answers, but just continued a fusillade of questions, and then statements, to make a spectacle, and, perhaps, a point. This was engineered as another Andrew Meyer “look at me” moment from the start, not a genuine search for answers.
Police informed him, under the authority of the Director of the facility, that his question time was over and that he needed to step away from the microphone. But he never relinquished the microphone, further showing that really getting answers was not his goal. He continued his tirade.
Just in the same manner you can request, require, and if necessary, force someone to leave your home, so can the Director of a University Center.
The determination to ask him to leave was based on his aggressive, ill mannered, loutish behavior. He was also making movement towards a US Senator. All the evidence showed him as a trouble-maker, not a genuine person wanting answers to a question. The University asked security to take control of the situation. If someone was in your house acting the same way I can easily see you calling for the police.
Meyer was asked politely several times to desist. He, himself, chose to escalate the situation. He, himself, set the stage for more aggressive behavior by security. He, himself, brought the situation to a tasering.
No, I have no sympathies for Meyer. This was planned and staged as well as a Broadway musical. Meyer had no rights on the campus, nor were any rights impeded – if so then show me the printed laws that were violated. Simply “saying” or “wanting” a right doesn’t make it so.
I have discovered that you Google this subject and leave your comments at those sites discussing this event. You are doing exactly that our Founders wanted to be protected. But you are acting in a civil and reasonable manner, and can be respected, something altogether different from Meyer.
You are a grandma threatened by what you see as a police state. I am a grandpa threatened by what I see as anarchy. You see an encroaching Fascism from the Right, whereas I see an encroaching Socialism from the Left.
May we both find peace.