Student at a Kerry event is Tasered

WASHINGTON - Senator John F. Kerry thought he was pacifying a potentially volatile situation when he allowed Andrew Meyer to approach the microphone Monday afternoon, even though the time allotted to Kerry's speech at the University of Florida had already run out.

"His first words were, 'Senator Kerry, they're trying to arrest me,' " Kerry said in an interview yesterday. "I tried to calm him down and I stopped them from arresting him. I began to answer his question."

Meyer never got to complete his questions, but did help to create a series of video clips that yesterday became YouTube hits.

In the videos, campus police are seen attempting to separate Meyer, a 21-year-old telecommunications major, from the microphone as he asked Kerry why he conceded the 2004 presidential election despite claims of vote fraud. As Meyer refused to yield, officers eventually pulled him to the back of the auditorium and shot him with a Taser, a gun that releases an electrical current of up to 50,000 volts.

While Meyer shrieked repeatedly for officers to stop, saying "Why are they arresting me?" and "Don't Tase me, bro." Kerry could be heard in the background from the stage. "I want to answer his question," the senator said, adding, "Unfortunately, he's not available to come up here and swear me in as president."

In the interview, Kerry, who said he was unable to see police use the Taser on the man from his position and did not know about it until he had left the university, declined to comment on the police's actions. "I was trying not to have a riot started," he said. "I thought it was important to keep the place contained, I guess would be the best way to put it."

Allegations of police brutality triggered campus protests, while Kerry's conduct during the incident drew scrutiny elsewhere. "His behavior here is pathetic," wrote Nick Antosca, a blogger at The Huffington Post. "Listen to him droning sonorously on in the background as a guy is dragged down the aisles and pinned to the ground."

Meyer, who has a history of chronicling his public hijinks, was released yesterday following a night in jail on charges of disturbing the peace and resisting an officer. In a press conference, university president J. Bernard Machen described the incident as regrettable and announced that two officers involved had been placed on paid administrative leave.

In addition, agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrived on campus to review the use of force at the university's request. A spokesman for Kerry said he did not expect the senator to be interviewed as part of the investigation.

Throughout the day yesterday, new perspectives on the encounter became public. One cable-news network appeared to combine footage from five camera angles. At one point, three different recordings of the encounter appeared on YouTube's list of the day's 20 most-viewed videos. They joined selections featuring actress Sally Field's Emmy remarks, a pair of flamboyant Spanish-soccer highlights, and something entitled "Let Me Borrow That Top."

In addition to footage shot by two local news cameras and what appear to be a variety of individual camera-phones, Meyer apparently contributed to the thorough documentation of his dramatic arrest. "The student who was Tasered had handed a camera to another person who was with him before he went up to speak," said Steve Orlando, director of the university's news bureau.

In addition to raising the issue of vote fraud in 2004, Meyer asked Kerry about the possibility of impeaching President Bush and whether the two former opponents were members of the secret Yale University society Skull and Bones. Meyer said his questions were based on Greg Palast's book "Armed Madhouse," a year-old muckraking anti-Bush bestseller that Meyer waved wildly as he was being subdued by police.

"Those are good questions. I would have liked to have finished answering the questions," Kerry said in his interview. "I have the book; I have it at home. It has an important chapter in it on the election."

That the event generated such attention appeared to puzzle Kerry yesterday, yet he acknowledged that even after a presidential campaign and numerous antiwar demonstrations he had not previously witnessed such a startling end to an otherwise civil speaking engagement.

"In all of the Vietnam protests and everything I've ever done where emotions were charged, I've never seen anything like it," he said.

Kerry, known in the Vietnam era for his gutsy confrontations with senators, noted a difference between Meyer's style and his own at a similar age.

"He barged to the head of the line," Kerry said. "This wasn't someone who waited patiently for his turn and asked a question."