My friend Vivek Mittal, an UCLA law student, writes extensively about this incident and the aftermath here -- there is a link to the really disturbing video on his blog as well. This part of his entry really struck me:
If we don’t call things as they are - that Mostafa was targeted because he was a Persian male, that he was cuffed and then tazed more than four times because he was a person of color, that the UCPD’s actions have created a climate of fear for people of color all over campus, that ’safety’ as a message only means more cops and no change in accountability - then we all suffer.
Otherwise, a colleague of mine said he talked to someone at a Persian news outlet in L.A. who says there are some rumors going around that the incident was some kind of hoax perpetrated by Tabatabainejad in order to sue the police. I guess we'll see how this plays out.
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