Saw the video a good while ago, probably the day it happened.
(about a week ago, I believe.)
I don't have the exact details of the background, but I can give you a general synopsis of the way it goes with tazers.
People break the law, refuse to comply, are threatening/dangerous, whatever. The police have a few options. They can try to subdue you with physical force, something that doesn't seem like too great of an option when the offender has a weapon, is strong, or is an immediate danger. They can use a club. They can taze you. They can shoot you. (Given criteria are met, of course.)
When I first learned about tazers being used in the police force, I thought "Great! They work to subdue people non-lethally. I'd rather have a criminal go through the justice process than be killed in the confrontation." But time and time again, I hear the same story:
Family members of a person who got tazed, or the person who got tazed get upset and call it "torture" "abuse of force" whatever. Nobdy seems to appreciate the fact that while your stupid drunk brother was fighting with the police, they could have done a lot worse than TAZE his butt.
But nobody seems to appreciate the fact.
By now I almost look down on tazers. We wouldn't get situations like this. If a cop pulls out a gun, YOU LISTEN. If a cop pulls out a tazer, a college student like this will say "Do it, I dare you."
So we need to look at the facts:
The student DISOBAYED OFFICERS OF THE LAW.
Sure it was about a library card, but as any officer could tell you, these things can go from ID card, to drug bust/ high speed chase/ homocide scene pretty darn fast, so you don't want to mess around.
After being tazed and a crowd was assembled, the student STILL REFUSED TO COMPLY WITH THE OFFICERS, instead preferring to use profanities.
But the cops weren't completely innocent. Once he had been subdued, they officers should have just tried to carry him off instead of tell him to stand up (which he refused to do, over and over, and over.) If he physically struggled, they should have put him down and given him another jolt. The way they did it was that they told him to stand up REPEATEDLY to which he refused. The officer with the taze gun told him that he was going to administer another jolt if he didn't stand up, student refused, jolt administered.
But it's tough to be an officer in this position, you're in a college with a crowd of students shouting at you and an uncoopertive criminal. Things can get out of hands on both sides. In fact, for all we know, if the officers had tried to drag the guy off, that could have set violence off.
By doing things this way, the cops never touched the guy. They told him what to do, he refused, they let him know the consequences and gave him an opportunity to comply, he got jolted (and repeat.) The cops never touched him. They gave him every opportunity to comply. Had the student said that he couldn't move because of the jolt (or something similar) and asked to be carried off, I'm sure they would have.
The moral: WHEN A POLICE OFFICER TELLS YOU TO DO SOMETHING, YOU DO IT.