Cops videotaped beating schizophrenic homeless man to death were acquitted of murder

[meeps]

An attorney representing a policeman acquitted of involuntary manslaughter on Monday said this: “These peace officers were doing their jobs…they did what they were trained to do”: beating a homeless man to death, as he screamed for help.
What was I thinking? I was so naive to even consider that the policemen caught on surveillance cameras beating Kelly Thomas to death in Fullerton California in the summer of 2011 would be held accountable. I lived through Rodney King and, of course, Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell and so many others. So, I should have known that these officers would be exonerated. Because, while Kelly Thomas was white, he was homeless and schizophrenic.
Police officers in Fullerton, CA were responding to reports about a man seen trying to break into cars near a bus depot on July 5, 2011. The police say Thomas, 37, fit the description and ran away after they found items belonging to someone else in his backpack. According to the police, Thomas resisted, so they called for backup and ultimately 6 officers were on the scene. The police say Thomas, who was unarmed and weighed 160 pounds was so strong and so resistant, that their force was necessary. But witnesses, medical reports and video say otherwise.


One of the innocent cops, Jay Cicinelli, Tased Thomas four times, hit him eight times with the Taser and kneed him in the head twice. Another innocent cop Manuel Ramos snapped on plastic gloves, made two fists held them in front of Thomas’s face and said, “Now see these fists? They’re going to [BEEP] you up.” The prosecutor explained, ”Kelly Thomas was not responding when blows to his face occurred.”
The cause of death “compression of the thorax,” that made Thomas unable to breath. Medical records also show that Thomas’s had bones broken in his face, choked on his own blood and was stunned with multiple times with two Tasers

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Ramos, 39, was acquitted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Cicinelli, 41, was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force

http://feministing.com/2014/01/14/co...ed/#more-73830

[Inscrutable Banana]

Truly a feel-good story.

[SmileyFace]

This is a local story where I'm at. I live about 20 mins from where the beating happened. Plenty of outrage here lately since the news of the acquittal. I can't say I'm too surprised, since more and more cops nowadays have gotten away with murder and other crimes, but still... at the same time, I couldn't believe they were acquitted. It seemed so sure all this time that they'd do some time for this tragedy.

[James]

This is really sad, but at the same time these stories don't surprise me anymore. Lots and lots of crooked cops out there (in my experience). There are some good ones, but there are a loooot of crooked ones. Part of the problem stems from the fact that a lot of the people that are drawn into that line of work are power-hungry, tyrannical, for obvious reasons. Wtf are you gonna do. Try not to get stopped in the greater Houston area, for starters lol. Or LA. Or New York. Or Chicago. Or Philadelphia. Or apparently not in Fullerton, CA either.

[Otherside]

Is it just me or do stories like this seem to be popping up all over the internet right now? I read one recently about cops shooting a Schizophrenic teenager whilst he was stunned and restrained.

[SmileyFace]

Is it just me or do stories like this seem to be popping up all over the internet right now? I read one recently about cops shooting a Schizophrenic teenager whilst he was stunned and restrained.

Nope, I've noticed the same thing as well.

[meeps]

Is it just me or do stories like this seem to be popping up all over the internet right now? I read one recently about cops shooting a Schizophrenic teenager whilst he was stunned and restrained.

Yeah, I just found that story now, sickening. this article gives a good picture of how incompetent mental health services are in this country, and how hard it is for people to get the help they need.

These stories are so common that I knew exactly what had happened after seeing the headline, before I'd even read about the case: a mentally ill family member had been in severe distress, family members couldn't see any other option than calling law enforcement for help, and something went horribly wrong. The state of mental health care in this country is such that police officers are being forced into the position of psychiatric first responders, which is unfair to mentally ill people, but it's also unfair to police, who are often poorly trained, if at all, in dealing with mental health issues.
Police officers are not the ideal people to respond to a psychiatric crisis. That's not their job, and it shouldn't be. The fact that they are often forced to respond to situations like this, where someone is threatening violence to himself or others, is a testimony to the serious problems with our mental health system: people aren't getting the care they need when they need it, we don't have a good system for handling psychiatric crises, and we're not providing family members and loved ones with the support they need.

http://www.xojane.com/issues/yet-ano...lled-by-police

[L]

It is sad that this kind of story doesn't make me angry any more.

[WintersTale]

The police are really getting out of control.