THE CRIME: Sleeping While Chinese
EUGENE, OREGON CONTINUES ITS WOEFUL TASER TRIALS, fumbling with this new electric torture device that has cops in a tizzy from coast to coast.
I covered the very first use of Tasers in Eugene, Oregon while working for MTV’s Street Team in 2008. I also covered the fifth use of tasers here in Eugene, when demonstrating college student Ian Van Ornum was tazed to the ground until he had seizures (video here, and embedded below; article here). +/-»
Well, now we have another ...
incident of Taser abuse in Eugene, Oregon (sombrero tip to Angry Asian Man) and believe it or not, it’s by the same cop who tazed Van Ornum. This time, he sent 50,000 volts into the body of a human being for Sleeping While Chinese.
The same Eugene police officer who used a Taser to subdue a protester last year in downtown Eugene is at the center of another high-profile stun gun incident — this one involving a Chinese, non-English-speaking college student whom the officer shocked during an ill-fated confrontation last month in west Eugene. …
This isn’t the first time Warden has faced Taser-related criticism. In May 2008, he used the weapon to control anti-pesticide protester Ian Van Ornum at a downtown rally while another officer struggled to handcuff the University of Oregon student.
Several witnesses charged that Warden unjustly used the Taser on Van Ornum, who was later convicted of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.
Van Ornum filed a formal complaint with the city against Warden and other officers involved in his arrest, which prompted a city investigation into their actions.
That’s about the connection to Van Ornum. Here’s the recent result of our new Electric Sadism Machines:
An investigation is under way to determine whether a Eugene police officer overreacted when he used a Taser stun gun to subdue a foreign college student who the officer mistakenly believed was trespassing in a west Eugene apartment.
The male student is a resident of an Asian country who does not speak English. He is involved in a University of Oregon program, but it is unclear whether he is an enrolled student, city Police Auditor Mark Gissiner said.
The incident unfolded the evening of Sept. 22 when a prospective tenant of an apartment on West 11th Avenue saw a man sleeping inside and reported it to police.
The property’s landlord, Timothy Breen of Eugene, said police called him about the initial report. Breen — who said transients had caused trouble at the complex before — met officers at the apartment complex and told them that he believed the unit should have been vacant.
A few minutes later, Breen said, he overheard the sound of a stun gun being deployed. Officers then came outside and spoke to Breen.
It was then that the landlord realized that the two Asian men inside the apartment had picked up keys for the unit from his office about three hours earlier.
The last time Officer Judd Warden was accused of discharging his Taser in an inappropriate way, the Lane County District Attorney pulled some sneaky stuff. Before Cristina Beamud finished auditing the situation to determine if Warden should be disciplined in any way, the DA decided to jump up before she was done and instead charge Van Ornum with crimes. (See second letter for one Eugene resident’s feelings on this—they were not alone, many felt this way because it was a plainly dishonest maneuver.)
The cop was declared righteous, the student deemed criminal, the electricity that laid him to the ground in spasm, validated and just. And so the law and the law’s thugs work hand in hand to prevent a larger sense of justice from playing out, while a young man concerned with toxins in the environment learns a harsh lesson in college. Fighting the power means you are in a serious underdog position and that sooner or later, they will come for you with violence sanctioned by law.
This time, the Officer Judd Warden and the landlord, and probably the state will excuse this as “Well, Jeez. I meant to blast the shit out of a sleeping transient! Not a person who rents an apartment!” and I hope it’s immediately clear how amoral this type of thinking is.
And why is it that the cops—these supposed badasses with jingly guns, darts, masks, cuffs, and training in submission holds—are always blasting homeless people, sleeping people, wheelchair users, shackled people…?????
You really want the nation to fear and hate cops even more than so many do now? Keep at this. Keep zapping people. Keep electrocuting people for “attitude problems” or “fast moves” (like turning away from you), or for sleeping in the wrong place; keep making it clear that being law-abiding isnt good enough anymore. Keep creating a collective mental image of bulletproofed goons shocking vulnerable or already incapacitated people, and handicapped, and pregnant, and elderly, and mentally confused, and homeless people.
Enough of that and one day you’ll need to hire your own protection from those you are ostensibly here to protect!
[This is the video I made while the auditing process—of what was deemed a "test case" by the Oregon Emerald for Taser use in the city—was still playing out.]
What people don’t know about that case is that the Department of Homeland Security had sent its agents into the area, concerned with “Eco-Terrorism,” which in this day and age will basically mean that anyone getting in the way of the profits of industry that harms the environment can be prosecuted as a Terrorist under George W Bush’s insanity-induced lawmaking frenzy enacted during his unfortunate tenure as Fake President. I know this had a lot to do with Ian Van Ornum getting blasted, and there’s actually a lot of storytelling that needs to happen on this instance, but this is a place where money and resources are needed for some on the ground reporting, and I don’t have those resources/money/time, unfortunately.
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