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An Iranian-American, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, 24, UCLA student who was shocked with a Taser by campus police after refusing to show his student ID card, has sued the university. The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, names UCLA, the campus Police department and officers Terrence Duren and Alexis Bicomong as defendants.
According to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court, Los Angeles.

Tabatabainejad, who grew up in the Sacramento area, alleges University of California, Los Angeles campus police officers used excessive force by repeatedly shocking him with the stun gun in the library campus on 14 Nov last year. Tabatabainejad had agreed to show his card on the condition that the guard check the IDs of other students in the library, but the request was denied, according to the lawsuit. As he was walking out of the Powell Library, Tabatabainejad said a campus police officer grabbed him by the arm and told him to leave. A second officer arrived and then dragged him toward the exit, where he was shocked several times. Tabatabainejad said he tried to remain calm, explaining to the officers that he was a student and that he suffers from bipolar disorder but Duren allegedly responded that he “didn’t know what bipolar has to do with standing up.”

The lawsuit claims the officers violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and caused intentional infliction of emotional distress. Tabatabainejad’s attorney Paul Hoffman said, “He told the officers he had the condition and the officers’ response was to Taser him and to hurt him rather to deal with him as a person with a disability.” “I suffered an unprovoked act of police brutality,” added Mostafa Tabatabainejad in a statement issued by his attorney. “I hope that no one else will ever have this experience at UCLA or anywhere else again.”

Paul Hoffman also said the ultimate goal of the lawsuit is to force fundamental changes in campus police culture. “What everyone saw on videotape demonstrates that the UCLA police department lacks the professionalism that parents of UCLA students expect from a public institution,” Hoffman said. “The larger goal of the suit is to change the way UCLA police behave and treat people on campus, their discipline and their training.”

The UCLA’s acting chancellor, Norman Abrams, issued a statement on Wednesday indicating that not all the information about the conflict between Tabatabainejad and the officers has been presented. He stressed that police are continuing an internal investigation and the university has launched an independent probe. “Shortly after the incident, I urged everyone not to rush to judgment and to let the investigations take their course,” Abrams said. “We regret that Mostafa Tabatabainejad has filed a lawsuit at this time. However, I am encouraging us all once again to await the results of the thorough, comprehensive reviews that are under way. I am confident that all of the facts will be known when the investigations are completed.”

Mostafa Tabatabainejad is still taking classes at UCLA and is on track to graduate in June with a degree in Middle Eastern studies. His father was born in Iran and moved to the United States in the late 1970s to attend California State University, Sacramento. His brother, Shahin Tabatabainejad, Shahin Tabatabainejad, 33, also graduated from UCLA.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 20th, 2007 at 3:08 am and is filed under Education, Personality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.