IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) #1?

I know it's late...but it took me a while to find a news story that really..."fired" me up.

Wednesday afternoon, while waiting for my 1:30 Japanese class to begin, a classmate asks me if I've heard of the SJSU student that was beat and tazed by police. Responding with a no, he shows me the YouTube video of the dim hallway. I couldn't really make out much, but for sure I could see the refrigerator, and one man just standing there and something going on in front of him. But the sounds alone, the cry of "No, please stop" made me upset, and I refused to watch any further. From the impression of the suspect's pleading I can tell that he was vulnerable. I have a strong sense of justice and can’t stand seeing people being treated unfairly. If a person is in a position to beg like that it definitely means that they can't do anything...so why are the police still beating him? That part ticked me off.

Conveniently someone left behind the Spartan Daily on the table and I noticed the front page news story about the video. And I have to admit, the article was kind of vague and so I fished around the San Jose Mercury for articles. And it’s not really the articles itself that makes me upset, it’s the responses of readers, who are saying that Ho deserved it because he was waving a knife around in the first place. Well, there has to be a reason for him to be waving the knife around right? If you were eating dinner, particularly a steak, what are you going to use to cut it up? A spoon? I’m kind of ticked off that people tend to highlight the violent factors of a story, and forget about the cause of those actions. I’d be pretty mad too if someone threw soap on my food. I’m sure you would too! That’s money!

Because the officer couldn’t understand Ho due to the accent, the officer went to retrieve his ID telling him to stand still. I’m assuming that the officer failed to tell Ho this and just barged into his room? If you can tell him to stand there, you can tell him that you’re going into his room to find his ID. Just because you’re the police I wouldn’t let you into my room without a reason, that’s an invasion of privacy.

Also, many of the readers are hung on the fact that Ho from Vietnam, and here to study. It seems as if they can’t possibly think of anything else to pick out and instead decide to rely on racial comments. I didn’t even know Ho’s name, nationality and living situation until after news articles. So what if he’s a foreign student? The main factor of this whole situation is the question of whether the beating was justified or not.


In the end, I believe everyone is at fault, Ho, his roommate, and the police. No one is innocent.

here are the links to the articles that I read:
http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_13635707?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_13646146
http://media.www.thespartandaily.com/media/storage/paper852/news/2009/10/28/News/San-Jose.Community.Reacts.To.Aggresive.Arrest.Video-3815484.shtml#5