Now, You See My Fists?
Now, You See My Fists?
By David Glenn Cox
It was just a simple police stop, I was walking back home from the store, penny food under my arm, when I saw him. A police cruiser parked crookedly on the side road, red and blue lights flashed wildly. Two black uniformed police officers held a wallet and stood over a subject sitting in the grass. He laid one arm across a raised knee his other propping him up. The man in the grass appeared casual, more relaxed about the situation than the police officers. Or maybe he was just tired; maybe he was just another soldier of the road, another veteran of our harsh times.
It brought back memories of an E-mail with a link to a video sent to me. In it, a young man was stopped by police in Fullerton California; he is lucid, conversational and was in no ways threatening or potentially violent. I watched this first video lasting only eight or nine minutes, but after watching it I went searching for a longer version. I wanted to understand how this could happen, the complete video was shocking and not for the faint of heart, a confrontation leading to a young man being tazered half a dozen times and beaten to a bloody pulp is over thirty minutes long.
As the video opens, a cop waves his baton assertively, like a peacock preening or a wild bull rutting in the ground. It is a full fifteen minutes after police begin their interrogation of this young man before things start going terribly wrong. The young man is obviously becoming tired of the police interrogation tactics. Questions asked with a snarl full of condescension, asked with intent to aggravate trying to get a rise out of the citizen.
“Seems like every day we gotta talk to you about something,” - Officer Manuel Ramos
“Two days in a row,”- Corporal Jay Cicinelli
As Ramos interrogates, Cicinelli calls out potential charges they could use to run this young man in on.
“So, I’m thinking of a 496?” - Corporal Jay Cicinelli
Ostensibly, police were investigating auto burglaries; it is unclear whether these burglaries took place that night, that week or last month. In any case, a quick inspection of this young man finds him not in possession of any property you might expect to be found on someone involved in auto burglaries.
“Hey, what is your name? Hey, what is your name? - Officer Manuel Ramos
“I think its Kelly or something,”- Corporal Jay Cicinelli
“Gonna take you to jail on suspicion of burglary”- Officer Manuel Ramos
There were no outstanding wants or warrants to hold this young man. His name was Kelly Thomas, the reason he didn’t give his name was because the cops already knew his name. This wasn’t a bust or an investigation it was just a roust, let’s go fuck with the homeless guy. So after fifteen minutes of abusive interrogation, after quarter hour of being detained and threatened with arrest treated with contempt and scorn. He is treated as untermunchin, because of his appearance and because of his poverty.
“Sit down, sit down, sit down!”- Officer Manuel Ramos
“Put your feet out in front of you get your hands out from behind you.
Put your feet out in front of you get your hands out from behind you.
Put your feet out in front of you get your hands out from behind you!
Put your feet out in front of you get your hands out from behind you!
Put your feet out in front of you.” - Officer Manuel Ramos
“Which one is it dude?” – Kelly Thomas
“Both!” - Officer Manuel Ramos
“So, should we take you for having someone else’s mail? - Corporal Jay Cicinelli
“Put your hands on your knees; put your feet out in front of you.” - Officer Manuel Ramos
“I can’t do both!”- Kelly Thomas
“Your gonna have to, real quick!”- Officer Manuel Ramos
“What’s wrong with you?” – Kelly Thomas
“Put your hands on your fucking knees” - Officer Manuel Ramos
“Now, you see my fists, they’re getting ready to fuck you up.” - Officer Manuel Ramos
“Start punching dude,” – Kelly Thomas
Hey, I’m sick of playing games, which is it?” – Kelly Thomas
“I’m tired of fucking around with you, get on the ground!” - Officer Manuel Ramos
“Get on the ground, on the ground!” - Corporal Jay Cicinelli
Then for the crime of talking back, of not tipping your hat, cringing properly or saying yes sir, this young man is beaten to death by police on the streets Fullerton California. Tazered repeatedly, tazered until their guns run out of juice. This black uniformed gang after empting all the high voltage from their tazer guns into the body of a defenseless young man then use the butt of their empty tazer guns to pistol whip this young man’s face beyond a mother’s recognition, all for the crime of talking back with attitude.
“Okay, I’m sorry dude,” - Kelly Thomas
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry.”- Kelly Thomas
“Put your hands behind your back!” - Officer Manuel Ramos
By this time the two officers have struck Thomas countless times with their nightsticks tackling him to the ground. They demand he put his hands behind his back but by now Thomas is simply too terrified to comply. As these two officers with weapons are still beating him they demand he give up all defense of his own body from their assault. It is better known on the street as, resisting assault, protecting yourself from the blows while the police beat you with their clubs.
“Okay, hang on a second” - Kelly Thomas
“Okay, I can’t breath dude” - Kelly Thomas
“Please, I can’t breathe!”- Kelly Thomas
Meanwhile, Corporal Jay Cicinelli is on top of Thomas kneeing him in the side while Ramos has him in a choke hold demanding he put his hands behind his back.
“Help, help, I can’t breathe!” – Kelly Thomas
“Lay on your fucking stomach” - Corporal Jay Cicinelli
“Relax dude,”- Officer Manuel Ramos
“I can’t,” - Kelly Thomas
“Relax,”- Officer Manuel Ramos
“Okay please, I can’t fucking breathe!”- Kelly Thomas
Officers then tazer Thomas, two more times as more officers arrive. Before the night is over six Fullerton officers will participate in the beating death of Kelly Thomas. Tazered two more times as Thomas answers, “Okay, okay, please sir.” The police response to his plea is to hold the trigger while applying the tazer to Thomas once more. Clearly he is frantic and in fear for his life, a wounded captured animal instinctively seeking escape.
“No, no, oh no!” – Kelly Thomas
Unidentified policeman to two new arriving policemen, “help us!”
Five policemen are now on top of Kelly Thomas; they have choked him, tackled him and beat him, all while repeatedly applying high voltage to him. As an officer says, “He must be on something.” This is the first justification, a young man minding his own business is somehow responsible for his own beating death. He must be on something he says as five two hundred pound policemen are on top Kelly Thomas suffocating the life out of him.
Thomas cries out, “Dad, Dad! Daddy, Oh Dad, dad help me! Oh dad, dad, dad my legs are broken. Dad, help me, dad, dad, dad help me dad.”
“There’s fucking blood everywhere” - unknown Fullerton Police officer.
“I can’t breath, oh help me dad, help me,”- Kelly Thomas
“Dad they’re killing me, dad” - Kelly Thomas
Thomas is losing strength now as the tone and intensity of his voice begins diminishing while still crying, “daddy, daddy, daddy.” By the reflection of the police lights you can see a pool of body fluids puddling around Kelly Thomas on the sidewalk. His last words were “Help me, help me, help me.”
“You did pretty good,” Corporal Jay Cicinelli to Officer Ramos
“Hey, what is your name? Hey, what is your name?” unidentified police officer addressing the limp, unconscious and bleeding body of Kelly Thomas.
“Well, his chest is still going up and down,” – unidentified Fullerton Police officer
“I got out my tazer and I just sort of smashed his face to hell.” – Fullerton Policeman
After being beaten into a unconscious bloody pulp, police relent as the young man has entered into an unconsciousness from which he would never return. There was no apparent sense of urgency about getting this unconscious bleeding young man any sort of medical attention, instead he lays there unconscious on the cold pavement in a puddle of his own blood and urine
We watch film clips from the history channel, of brutal black uniformed thugs beating down innocents and making us reevaluate just what it actually means to be a human being. We think, what sort of mind could create such depravity? Yet this happened on the streets of an American city quite recently. So how is this any different, one group of lawless black shirted goons versus any other group of black shirted goons.
Ostensibly, the officers simply want to know his name. Only they already know him, he’s a homeless guy who stays close to the bus station. Crazy huh, think about time the next time you see a “No Public Restroom” sign. You have to have money in your pocket to use the restroom in this country making the Bus station possibly the only restroom for miles.
Kelly Thomas was a diagnosed schizophrenic but on the night of his murder he was the sanest man involved in the confrontation. His death is a warning to us, a clarion call, the living proof of the Stanford experiment for all to see. Proof that while history doesn’t always repeat, it does rhyme. A Brave New World class structure, it’s okay to kill Gammas because there’s so many of them. Murdered by the state, without judge or jury just because they wanted to and because they could and there was no one to stop them.
“He’s looks cyanotic now,” - Paramedic
“Yeah, he’s pretty cyanotic. – Other Paramedic
Definition:
Cyanosis is a physical sign causing bluish discoloration of the skin and mucous membranes. Cyanosis is caused by a lack of oxygen in the blood. Cyanosis is associated with cold temperatures, heart failure, lung diseases, and smothering. It is seen in infants at birth as a result of heart defects, respiratory distress syndrome, or lung and breathing problems.
“He ain’t dead, he ain’t half dead,” – unidentified Fullerton Police Officer
“Your DAR (Tazer) is on the back of the trunk, it’s got blood all over it.”- Unidentified Fullerton Police Officer
“I got out my tazer and sort of smashed his face to hell.” - Unidentified Fullerton Police Officer
Official cause of death; mechanical compression of the thorax
Kelly Thomas (April 5, 1974 – July 10, 2011)
Officer Manuel Ramos - charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
Corporal Jay Cicinelli - is charged with involuntary manslaughter and felony use of excessive force.
= new reply since forum marked as read
When is the trial ?
And I bet it happens way more than we even know.
For Truth. 
Even if we stipulate that the initial officer was a douchebag (and he certainly seemed that way to me), the real issue and question here is not what happened prior to the use of force, but rather was the use of force necessary, and if so was it excessive?
In this case we have a gruesome and gut wrenching tape we can study. After reading so many people's comments here I decided to review it more carefully:
In it we see the suspect ignore the officer's instructions. The officer, for his own safety, wanted the guy to sit a certain way, apparently so that he could search him (note that he is putting on gloves at this point in the tape). The suspect, who seems lucid but argumentative, complies briefly. The officer then leans over him and begins talking smack (aka warning him that he is going to "fuck him up if he doesn't start listening"
. The suspect tells the officer, "Start punching dude", and that "He is tired of playing games" with him.
The suspect then leans back, removing his hands from his knees, and when the officer grabs his arm the suspect stands aggressively. The officer pulls his nightstick and his backup comes forward, also with his nightstick drawn.
The officers begin ordering the suspect to get on the ground. They warn him three times to "Get on the ground" before striking him even a single time. The suspect ignores all three warnings, and instead continues to try and leave the scene. One officer strikes the suspect in the leg (I believe he connected) but the suspect continued to try and leave. They tackle him and begin attempting to restrain him. The suspect, while yelling that he is sorry and what not, continues to fight, he continues to try and get back to his feet, he refuses to allow the officers to restrain him.
This is all clearly visible on the tape.
The suspect continues to beg and plead, all while fighting, and the officers continue to try and wrestle him into submission. This goes on for just over TWO MINUTES, with the two officers fighting to control and restrain him and the suspect continuing to resist.
After two minutes of fighting, two additional officers arrive on the scene.
The FOUR officers now attempt to try and apply restraints to the suspect. He continues to fight them off. After another minute of this one of the officers applies a Taser for the first time, and another officer calls for additional backup.
A fifth officer arrives approximately 45 seconds later and joins in the efforts to restrain the suspect. Up until this point, in MY OPINION, the officers on scene did nothing particularly wrong. They were using appropriate force, with little effect, to try and subdue a very dangerous suspect who was continuing to resist their combined efforts to subdue him..
At approximately 19:28 (on the youtube video) in my opinion we see the first real use of what appears to me to be excessive force .
The suspect is still fighting (the now six officers) and one of the officers on the suspects back draws his flashlight and begins wailing on the suspect with it. I believe I counted five blows. We do not know where he was striking, but his injuries suggest that the blows were to the suspects face and head. A blow like this is always potentially lethal, and with the number of officers on scene it was (in my opinion) unnecessary. I believe, based on the tape, that these were the blows that killed him.
It was at this point that the suspect begins calling for his father, becoming increasingly less combative and coherent as time passes. By 22:30 the suspect is simply moaning and no longer appears to be actively resisting. By 24:30 the suspect is no longer even moaning and the officers on scene are realizing just how seriously injured the suspect is. Mr Thomas apparently never regained consciousness.
Hopefully you will eventually revise your opinion of me. Until then, peace 
I experienced and witnessed police brutality as a kid growing up in Los Angeles.
I experienced that, and much much worse, when, I was shipped off to a special youth center. There I not only enjoyed protracted violence, but outright torture including sleep deprivation and various mind-fuck reprogramming games. I spent a year and a half there total, six months of it locked into a room with fifty other kids, lights always on, no windows, never once even looking outside, spending all day every single day standing at attention with my nose six-inches from a wall. That was the fun part of that unit, the not so fun part was when the guards would drag you off to the time-out room, cuff you, strip your clothes off, and beat you. The room wasn't padded, it had carpet on the walls and floor, and for fun the guards liked to drag your naked body on the carpet until you bled everywhere. I had the scars for years.
Three days was the longest they forced me to stay awake, three days writing "confessions" of my various crimes (like having sinful thoughts or encouraging satanism or whatever they dreamed up) only to have them tear them up and tell me I was lying, three days getting hit every time I nodded off. Three days of fear is a long time my friend.
I know about brutality. I hate injustice. And I fucking HATE the police.
I watched this video expecting to see it. Instead I saw what happens when a douchebag cop runs headlong into a crazy person. Once the guy stood up and refused to get back down, it was on. We BOTH know that. If you refuse to comply with they are hitting you, they are going to keep hitting you, particularly if they haven't had the chance to check you for weapons.
Like I said above, having experienced it first hand, I hate injustice. I really do.
And that's probably why I felt compelled to post my OPINION on this video, even knowing that it was the minority opinion and knowing that I was going to get flamed for it.
Anyway, it's nothing personal. We are ALL on the same team here.
Peace
loved him. He was a beautiful child, and very much loved, but he had a mental illness, that is all. He was known to the people in his community, he was not violent, no threat to anyone. He chose to live the way he did but was never far from his mother's thoughts.
http://technorati.com/politics/article/when-we-feel-ashamed-of-ourselves/
When We Feel Ashamed Of Ourselves
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On a fateful day of July, a part of me died with Kelly Thomas in Orange County, CA.
Kelly Thomas was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early twenties. He was homeless and often wandered on the streets of Fullerton where he was a familiar face to the local shopkeepers and even police. He was considered by locals as a harmless and friendly person.
This is what he looked like before the thugs beat him to death. The photos of him after the crime, are far too gruesome to post here. But if you have the stomach for it, they are linked to in the above article:
There are also many photos of him as a little boy, and with his brother I believe, who was close to him.
This crime was so monstrous that people have had difficulty trying to understand how human beings could be so evil.
Having a relative who is mentally ill, I know the fears families have for their safety. But never, in anyone's wildest dreams could they have imagined a nightmare like this.
I rarely feel this way, but those cops are a serious, serious threat to society and should never again see the light of day.
RIP Kelly, a beautiful soul for whom maybe, this cruel world was never meant for.
Thank you for remembering him.
case:
2 Fullerton Police Officers Charged In Beating Death Of Kelly Thomas
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Manuel Ramos (left), Jay Cicinelli (right) (credit: Orange Co. District Attorney's Office)
Edited to add, you misread the article, the author was referring to their uniforms:
'Black-uniformed gang'
I had a weird encounter with them in 1972. Not as lethal, of course, but weird nonetheless. I was riding in a car with my boyfriend and his two friends. I was notorious for going barefoot (I still do) and happened to be shoeless on this particular evening. We were just rolling down the street and got pulled over for some unknown reason. We were all ordered out of the car and after giving the guys a bunch of shit one of them came over to me and threatened to haul me in for prostitution. Apparently me being in a vehicle with three males and no shoes on was a clear signal to them that I was a Working Girl. They eventually let us go but that whole prostitution threat was just out of left field.
