I'm standing at the back of the University Auditorium. My left hand is wrapped over the top of my 400, and I'm kind of staring at the ground. John Kerry has been talking for almost 90 minutes, the last 30 of which he has occasionally stopped in order for the audience to pose a new question.
At one point in the "town hall forum," I was really listening to the senator. That doesn't happen often. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a member of the Accent security team motion for a Univeristy Police officer.When Gen. Petraeus spoke on Capitol Hill last week, I was disgusted that several protestors disrupted the meeting. "It's happening again," I thought.
I didn't think much of the security guard's summons until I saw several other officers try to remove a student who was stationed at a microphone, center-right in the auditorium. "Better get down there," I thought.
The next 10 minutes are somewhat blurry. However, I remember the student asking Kerry a series of long-winded questions. Then he scuffled with police, who almost Tasered him at the center of the auditorium.
Officers "escorted" the student to the back of the auditorium, where he continued to aggressively resist. I wasn't able to get close to the group at that point, so I went to an elevated point of the lobby to photograph the man's evintual exit from the auditorium. I heard him scream, and I knew he had been Tased.
He was taken to an Auditorium office for several minutes until a police cruiser arrived to take the arrested student to jail. I shot the quazi-perp walk. Surprisingly, the arrested student stated and spelled his name for news photographers documenting the scene.
And to think, I was waiting for Kerry to finish so I could get a stereotypical waving shot.
1 comment:
Wow. What was the guy doing that made the officers think it might be necessary to tase him? I guess resisting arrest, but your narrative makes me think they were expecting tase-able trouble before it actually presented itself. I'll everyone you say Hi.
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