The Paper Trail

UCLA Taser Cop Was Once Officer of the Year--And Once Shot a Homeless Man

November 21, 2006 RSS Feed Print
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Terrence Duren is the officer who used a Taser gun to shoot UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad for failing to present an ID while in a campus library, campus police announced Monday. Duren, who was named officer of the year in 2001, also was accused of brutality in 2003, when he shot a man he believed was intruding in a university hall. The man, Willie Davis Frazier, turned out to be homeless, but--like the UCLA student--claimed he never resisted Duren's request that he leave the lounge.

At the time, the Daily Bruin reported that the two men's accounts of the incident varied widely, "mainly because Frazier said he never struck Duren or held any of Duren's weapons during the incident--issues that make up the three charges against him." As of March 2005, the case had not been decided, but Frazier was being held in the psychiatric unit of an L.A. jail because he could not pay his $500,000 bail, according to the Daily Bruin. Here's a YouTube video of the Taser incident.

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