A Chinese national trying to buy iPhones in Nashua, New Hampshire was tasered outside an Apple Store last Friday. A cell phone video shows 44-year-old Li Xiaojie being held to the ground before police knocked her unconscious with tasers.
Her 12-year-old daughter was with her.
Li was at Pheasant Lane Mall to buy her third and fourth iPhones, after she had purchased two the previous day. She said it was for family in China. The store wouldn’t let her, and when she began filming customers allegedly buying multiple iPhones, the cops were called in. She was carrying more than $16,000 in cash.
As for the aftermath of the attack, New Hampshire’s Union Leader reports:
“Her brain went totally blank,” said [Dave] Chen, [Li's uncle,] who owns Thousand Crane II restaurant in Nashua. “She didn’t understand what happened.”
“She’s never been treated like this,” he said Thursday. “She feels so ashamed. It’s a nightmare for the rest of her life.”
Shoppers at the Pheasant Lane Mall videotaped the incident, in which Officers John Murphy and Joseph Rousseau struggled to arrest Li. According to police, 15 minutes passed from the time she was asked to leave the store and when the taser was used.
A worker at the Invisible Shield Kiosk, which sits directly across from the Apple store, said it’s common for people to purchase large quantities of Apple products in tax-free New Hampshire and resell them at a profit.
“These re-sellers are known to buy out hundreds of thousands, if not millions worth of dollars in Apple merchandise,” the man said. “It is the sole reason as to why they have police details in the Apple store to begin with.”
The family really wanted those iPhones though.
But after picking her up at the police station, he said he drove to the mall with Li and attempted to get the phones himself and was denied.
Was this a case of discrimination — the Apple store singling out the Chinese woman for buying multiple iPhones — or were the police right use force to deal with an unruly civilian?
One thing’s for sure: enforcement officers in China and the US are very different. As Hidden Harmonies notes:
Chinese visitors to the U.S. have no clue how merciless law enforcement can be in this country. It is totally different than in China where citizens often can get away with screaming and yelling at the police!
A week after the incident — today, that is — iPhone 5s were released in mainland China. In Beijing, it was “arguably the least eventful launch of an Apple device in the company’s four-year history in the Chinese capital,” according to Wall Street Journal.
Collage via MIC Gadget
纳舒厄欢迎你！
That’s one angry bird right there.
The story in a nutshell:
Rich Chinese doesn’t get what she wants, starts being obnoxious, gets met with rather excessive force and starts feeling sorry for herself. Wah Wah Wah.
I agree, and what she didn’t understand is that the store has the right to refuse service to anybody, and once they asked her to leave, she was trespassing.
15 minutes of trespassing and then she was tasered for being combative and not leaving the store.
Doesn’t seem overly excessive to me.
Are you kidding me? All the comments so far in this comment thread are disgusting. Really? Acquiescence of excessive police force, victim blaming, even hating on nouveau rich Chinese now, are we?
Have we come this far since “Don’t taze me bro” circa 2007?
Whether she was “trespassing” or not (in an Apple store, a FUCKING APPLE STORE), is that any reason to electrocute a person?!?!?
Trespassing for what, by the way? Stealing? Drug trafficking? No, um, wanting to BUY MORE FUCKING IPHONES.
Have you all become so accustomed to the Tazer like it’s no big deal now?
Jesus Christ.
Act like Black Friday Walmart trash, and you’ll get treated like Walmart trash.
And carrying $16,000 in her bag?
Haha! You can take the woman out of China….
She lives in one of the most expensive suburbs of Boston (which has an extremely active police force) and is clearly not used to hearing no from anyone. Whether or not the police were excessive is one issue, but her saying she couldnt understand why they couldn’t sell her more product because of a language barrier is BS. No is means no, even if you don’t speak the language.
I’ve seen behavior like this in San Gabriel county (New Chinatown) in the LA metro area. Many of the new-immigrants from China, meaning they are rich and not refugees, just simply don’t understand authority and rule of law – often conflicts arise between them and their American neighbors, traffic police, and tax authorities.
This is why China is so great if you have money – why would you want to even move to the USA?
I often wonder about this. For Chinese new rich that emigrate to the West the biggest shock must be that they have to behave.
Word
I think Apple stores in America should seriously consider posting “No Chinese FOB ALLOWED” in their doors! ASAP!
I think it’s because when you live in a place where the law is viewed as a net, and the clever fish swim around it, or dart through the holes, they still have to live in fear of the political well-connected sharks.
Here the law is like a wall, and people get annoyed when they see someone jumping over it.
Not a surprise. Chinese women are in the god tier of narcissism due to Chinese society, its worship of money and of face. If they don’t get what they want then they go nuts.
I guess “my father is Li Gang” didn’t work this time…