University Of Florida Taser Incident
On September 17, 2007, U.S. Senator John Kerry addressed a Constitution Day forum at the University of Florida in Gainesville, which was organized by the ACCENT Speakers Bureau, an agency of the university's student government. Initially allowed to ask questions after the close of the question period, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year-old fourth-year undergraduate mass communication student, entered into a planned line of questioning and was escorted away from the microphone. He immediately resisted the campus security and was subsequently arrested by university police. During arrest, the officers asked him repeatedly to stop resisting, but Meyer continued to struggle and scream for help. During the attempt to arrest Meyer, one of the officers drive stunned him with a Taser following Meyer's shouted plea to the police, "Don't tase me, bro!".
Several videos of the episode were then posted on the Internet. The most viewed version of the video, shot by Kyle Mitchell of The Gainesville Sun, has more than 6.8 million views on YouTube as of May 2013. The New Oxford American Dictionary listed "tase/taze" as one of the words of the year for 2007, popularized by the widespread use of the phrase "Don't tase me, bro!" Meyer registered the phrase as a trademark in September 2007. The Yale Book of Quotations designated Meyer's exclamation as the most memorable quote of 2007. Time selected the video as one of YouTube's 50 Best Videos in March 2010. Mick Jones, former guitarist for The Clash, wrote and published a song inspired by the event, "Don't Tase Me, Bro", and new wave band Devo's song "Don't Shoot (I'm a Man)" contains the lyric "They'll hunt you down and tase you bro" and ends with the refrain "Don't tase me bro!" The quote was also used by nerdcore rapper, MC Lars, in his song "True Player For Real", and by Ben Folds Five in their 2012 song, "Erase Me". In The Boondocks episode "It's a Black President, Huey Freeman", Grandpa utters the phrase before being tazed.
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