Homeless and mentally ill Kelly Thomas was not just murdered by a team of six Fullerton cops on July 5, 2011, he was arguably tortured to death. His ‘crime’ was apparently jiggling door handles in a parking lot.
While lying on the ground during the hideous confrontation, he was ‘choked, tased, punched, bludgeoned with batons, kicked and smothered for nearly nine minutes, only pausing when he stopped pleading for help’.
The coroner said the cause of his death after fie days in a coma was ‘insufficient oxygen to the brain’. Peace officers knelt on him as they delivered their punishments.
Before he finally lost consciousness, Kelly cried out over and over for his dad to help him 31 times. He cried “help me” 26 times and cried out “I’m sorry” 15 times. He responded “OK” to police, a full 29 times and used words like “Sir” and “Please” as they dispatched him.
“Dad help me.”
“God help me.”
“Help me. Help me. Help me.”
He may simply not have had enough air to cry in anguish: “I can’t breathe” at some point.
Officer Manuel Ramos was tried for second degree murder, and Ex-Corporal Jay Cicinelli, a former LAPD Officer, were charged with involuntary manslaughter and using excessive force. Neither was convicted. Apparently this charming ‘magician’ of a defense attorney convinced jurors that there was more context at play than what the gruesome video recording showed their ‘inexpert, civilian eyes’.
From CBS Los Angeles:
“A wrongful-death lawsuit brought against the city of Fullerton in the death of Kelly Thomas has been settled for $4.9 million, attorneys announced Monday.
The Fullerton City Council approved the deal during a closed-door meeting called just as opening statements were set to being in trial of the lawsuit, which was filed by Thomas’ father Ron on the one-year anniversary of his son’s 2011 death.
The lawsuit alleged assault and battery, negligence, wrongful death and civil rights violations.
An 11-woman, five-man jury was told to stay home and return to court tomorrow. The panel is still expected to come to the courthouse, but the judge presiding over the case will simply thank them for their service and dismiss them.
Several officers were involved in the beating but Manual Ramos and Jay Cicinelli were charged and went to trial, only for a jury to acquit them. A third cop, Joseph Wolfe, was never charged.
Ramos was arrested over the summer on domestic charges, but prosecutors decided not to pursue those charges.
Fullerton city attorney Richard Jones tried to put a positive spin on the news, telling the Voice of Orange County there is a possibility an insurance company pay cover the cost of the settlement, so it would not have to come out of taxpayer’s pockets.
But it always comes out of taxpayer’s pockets, even if it goes through the insurance company first, which will be sure to jack up their rates if they do pay this settlement.”
I won’t embed the 39-minute video evidence at PINAC, although there are shorter versions on youtube, including one or two in which onlookers seem to be despicably treating his pulverization like a sporting event. Nor will I embed the ‘after’ photo; I had nightmares last night just recalling watching all those years ago.
Rest in Power and Light, Kelly Thomas, and may your spirit and your family eventually find some measure of peace.
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‘Several people shot near protest site after police killing of Jamar Clark’; Early reports say five people have non-life-threatening injuries after incident close to demonstration marking death of unarmed 24-year-old last week’
Yes, protestors had been been engaged in a days-long sit-in at the 4th precinct station. The shooters are alleged to have been white supremacists. None of the gunshot wounds are apparently life-threatening. Jamar Clark’s brother have asked protestors to suspend their actions as a result of the shootings.
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Today’s Guardian: ‘Chicago police officer who shot black teen 16 times charged with murder’; Officer Jason Van Dyke charged with murder one day before judge’s deadline for releasing video of shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald’
“A white Chicago police officer has been charged with murder in the shooting death of a black teenager, just one day before a deadline by which a judge has ordered the city to release a squad-car video of the incident.
Veteran officer Jason Van Dyke was indicted on Tuesday on a first-degree murder charge in the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times.
City officials and community leaders have been bracing for the release of the video, fearing an outbreak of unrest and demonstrations similar to what occurred in Ferguson, Baltimore and other cities after young African American men were slain by police. The judge ordered the dash-cam recording to be released by 25 November after city officials had argued for months it could not be made public until the conclusion of several investigations.
Several people who have seen the video say it shows the teenager armed with a small knife and walking away from several officers on 20 October 2014. They say Van Dyke opened fire from about 15ft and kept shooting after the teen fell to the ground. An autopsy report says McDonald was shot at least twice in his back. It also said PCP, a hallucinogenic drug, was found in the teen’s system.
Van Dyke is the first on-duty officer to be charged with murder in nearly 35 years while working for the Chicago police department.”
And much more on the Chicago police union’s ‘opinion’, the Peace Officer’s ‘complaint record’ and settlements (FOIAed by the Tribune), etc.
Updated: the video is now in the public sphere
‘He turns briefly toward one of the officers and is then shot, the impact of the first bullet apparently spinning him around before he collapses on the street. A puff of smoke or dust can be seen rising near his body as a bullet hits the ground. The camera continues to focus on his prone body as the officers, now out of frame, shoot him multiple times. An autopsy report from the Cook county medical examiner’s office showed McDonald was shot 16 times.’
On Tuesday night activists took up the chant “16 shots” as they formed a human circle at a busy intersection in Chicago.’
There really are just too many other grievous and outrageous police stories to bring for now…
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
It appears the Pigs are drawing or sending White civilian shock troopers to the Black encampment in Minnietropolis. Four young masked Regulators were run off from the camp and stupidly chased with five protesters being shot and wounded. The porkers then gassed the demonstrators but they did arrest the shooter later.
i’m assuming it’s the same shootings at the jamar clark sit-in i’d mentioned in the OP? that said that the cops were looking for three (unmasked) white males. i’ll bingledy and look for a link; thanks.
i was hoping to get part I of pre-copt21 post up yet today, so i’m apparently a bit behind on the news. ha; it may have to be in III parts there’s so much information (and healthy cynicism).
different coverage had either one, two, or three white males arrested, so i chose Reuters’ three.
“Minneapolis police on Tuesday arrested three men in the shooting of five people near a police station where demonstrators have gathered for more than a week to protest the killing of an unarmed black man by police officers.
A 23-year-old white man was arrested before midday in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington and two men aged 26 and 21, both white, turned themselves in and were later arrested, police said.
“As I said before, we are sparing no efforts to bring any and all those responsible to justice,” Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges said.”
well, then…get the video of jamar clark’s killing released, mayor hodges.
What we may be witnessing is the escalation of the use of force and intimidation aimed at this growing Black movement and its many variations who seem to be uniting.
The old disruption methods, police brutality, media denigration, infiltration, cooptation and incarceration don’t seem to be working possibly due to BLM’s non-leadership anarchism. Allowing or instigating the always simmering White Fright and Race War demographic to join the large segment of the population, who love their Pigs, in leading the counterinsurgency may be a growing plan of action.
could you run your second paragraph by me again in simpler form? i keep reading it, and not grasping your meaning, i think. i’ll admit my head if full of non-profit industrial complex themes, so maybe i’m not very adaptable as far as…switching gears…
oh, my; believe me when i say i don’t mind you calling these dickwads ‘pigs’. i just decided recently that i may no longer be able to, because i admire pigs in so many ways. as in: it seems like an insult to pigs.
I don’t know where I lost you but it appears to me that the Capitalist Pigs may be willing to unleash the White supremacists to help destroy the BLM movement and many people may celebrate the reduction of that threat. The WS groups have long ago been infiltrated by the FBI so there could even be instigation.
The first recorded use of the word pig to identify the police was in 1811 but it was the Yippies who used it in ’68 in Chicago that brought it into common usage, if the source I read is correct.
If the little piggy’s I love for breakfast were offended by my using their name to identify the Pigs, I might stop and stop eating them too. If someone can come up with an equally descriptive and powerful tag to place on these degenerate humans I might use it but so far the names offered are quite lame.
In our PM and PC time no one is supposed to be offended or offensive so a few Black and White radicals will have to maintain this tradition.
ah, now i understand. i’d thought you’d been expanding on, riffing off this you’d said earlier: “Four young masked Regulators were run off from the camp and stupidly chased with five protesters being shot and wounded.”
i well remember “off the pigs”, but please don’t pretend i was PC-ing you; in fact, i’d said i was not objecting. one day i may have to revert to it myself, having not found any other even regional terms that express enough denigration.
cossacks, tit heads (from UK helmet shapes), and wallopers.
origin of popos: “ The Popos: A Police officer. Especially the ones that rides on bikes. Orgin: California late 80’s Police officers that patrols certain beaches on bikes wore a vest that said PO in huge blockletters on each of their chest which means Police Officer. They usually ride around in group of two’s. When you see them coming by. you see the word “PO” “PO” when they stand next to each other.”
oh, and of course, in jamaican rasta-speak: Babylons.
in this particular case, the white supremacists seem to have written a lot of emails to one another before the shootings, but yes, it would be no surprise to find fibbies among those folks. agents provocateur are pretty standard, and during Occupy days…almost legion.
‘Questions Remain About Missing Audio in McDonald Dash-Cam Video’
“The dash-cam video of the Laquan McDonald shooting has no audio, which has some raising questions about what exactly happened the night a CPD officer shot him 16 times. NBC 5’s Political Editor Carol Marin reports.”
the anchor also reminds viewers of the missing 86 minutes from the security cameras a burger king, a hundred feet away for laquan’s execution. cops obviously erased it; alvarez says: no evidence of that, sorry. jayzus, what a lying cow she is. oh, and rahm swears he’s never seen the dashcam video. what.a.lying.bastard.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/WEB-5P-CAROL-MARIN-MISSING-AUDIO_Chicago-354065031.html?_osource=taboola-recirc
Ironic isn’t it that we’re back at Chicago 47yrs later and the Pigs are still earning their name and its under another Democrat.
I think it was at BAR I read that someone is talking about real reform/destruction of our policing system. and a new system of Peace providers bases and drawn from only local citizens. It’s a great sounding idea that might work in an organized, unified and mobilized community, if they could find one.
ooof; ironic as all giddy-up. ‘law and order for some™’ Democrats. all would of course forgive me for imagining slapping smirks off rahm’s nasty face, yes? heh; i was gonna use a cheyenne-ism, “the lying dog of a dog’, but again…that sure disses dawgs. ;-)
i’l look at bar when i have time, but i do remember that chéPasa is an abolitionist, although i never could imagine what that might look like. i’ve brought links a few times to small cities with no police, dunno if that wold scale up. there are communities experimenting with pretty well organized ‘don’t call 911 for mental health help! call us!’ i’ve brought links to in the past.
‘peace providers’; i might hunt it up in a bit.
i dunno what’s happened to comrade x; i hope he’s not under the weather. but yeah, you both snarl and paw the ground a bit at one another.
‘apostrophes’?
here is what you may have been thinking of at BAR: ‘mumia’s new pamphlet‘, which (ahem) must be ordered thru the free mumia organization. anyway:
“Mumia follows the spirit of Huey’s proposal. The basic principles and goals would be:
a) abolishing the existing police departments b) establishing a Citizen’s Peace Force to serve the local community needs c) selecting the persons serving in this capacity from their respective city council districts, and d) training those chosen and educating them in areas of urban problem solving.”
“He points out the uselessness of anything that does not change the power relations between the people and the police.”
keegan stephan is with PINAC now, and good on him. you may remember so was florididian charlie grapski, who‘d gone to ABQ to cover protests and assassinations there. for his trouble, he was put into a mental hospital, finally got out, but may still be too traumatized to report any longer. from ray kelly to billy bratton. this is insane.
‘NYPD Violently Assaults Protesters, Arrests Family of Police Abuse Victims for Marching’
I’m wondering what’s happened to our friendly Comrade X, I miss his lame attempts at character assassination and overuse of apostrophes.