I don't think he got tased for asking a question... I'm pretty sure it was for resisting arrest. I've watched the footage several times now, and as far as I can tell the order of events was something like this:
- Hyperactive, self-righteous college student launches a nonstop barrage of accusitory, hostile questions at Kerry.
- Kerry attempts to answer; college student continues to talk over him.
- Organizers request that college student allow Kerry to speak; student does not comply.
- Police at the event are asked to remove the student and attempt to do so. On a side note, at this point Kerry is asking the police to wait and allow the student to hear Kerry's answer.
- Student ignores police, and becomes physically uncooperative. If I'm not mistaken, this is about the time that most law enforcement and security types are taught (and legally allowed) to physically restrain someone and, in this case, escort them off the premises.
- When the student begins resisting enough that he can't be restrained without risking his own safety or those of the officers or the surrounding spectators, the officers inform him that he's being placed under arrest. (A reasonable move in my book; it's definitely disorderly conduct by now.)
- Student asks, "Why am I under arrest?" "What did I do?" etc. The cops don't seem to answer, which is out of line, but the student also doesn't seem to be paying attention to them, so it probably wouldn't have helped if they had answered him anyways. (Or perhaps they did explain, and it simply isn't audible over the student's shouting. In any case, the answer is fairly obvious; disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, disrupting a public event...) This is the type of thing to fight in court, not while you're being arrested. If he'd cooperated at this point, some of those cops might've been recieving disciplinary action by now.
- More cops join in to restrain the student; at this point I'd say the force is becoming excessive. They probably could have let the kid go, surrounded him, and let him make a fool of himself until he got tired of ranting. Once he quiets down, run down his charges and take him out. However, the cops were asked to remove him from the building so that the Q&A can continue with an important guest who has limited time, so I still don't think they were egregiously out of line.
- Student continues to resist, and the way he's flailing, if he'd made contact with an officer, the charges could've gone up to assaulting an officer. They then warn him that he's about to be tasered. We all know what happens next.
I think Nepenthusiast makes a good point that the audience pretty much ignored the situation after the cops grabbed the student. That's a big indicator; if the cops were out of line, don't you think at least a few people in the audience might've protested and gotten involved? It seems obvious to me that the kid had worn out his welcome.
While I normally have a healthy anti-authoritative attitude towards cops, this is the kind of thing I think they're invaluable for. As far as I'm concerned, this is hardly even abuse of authority; certainly not compared to the police riots I've seen in Portland and Seattle. I've had cops in Portland (not actually Portland PD, but an outlying suburb) drive onto my private property and try to escort me from my driveway back into my house for being _outside_ past curfew (which is supposed to apply only to public property in that municipality.) That was a situation that really got ugly, on several occasions. This guy had a chance to do things peacably, and he belligerently wasted it. I have no sympathy for him; he got way better than most folks do.
~Joe