On July 5, 2011, a mentally ill homeless man named Kelly Thomas was beaten into a coma at a bus depot in Fullerton, CA. Police officer Manuel Ramos first approached Thomas, known to be nonviolent, after receiving reports of car vandalism in the area. While Ramos ordered Thomas around, another police officer searched through his bags but was unable to find any incriminating evidence. Thomas was slow to comply to Ramos’ orders at first, so the police officer began beating him. He was later joined by more police officers, some of whom clubbed him with a baton while another shocked him with a taser multiple times. Thomas was in a coma before he even arrived at the hospital. The decision was made to remove his life support five days later and Kelly Thomas succumbed to his injuries on July 10, 2011.
A more comprehensive report of the incident that led to Kelly Thomas’ death can be found here: http://www.pixiq.com/article/power-of-social-media. For those who are interested (caution: the footage is graphic), the surveillance camera along with audio from the policemen’s microphone can be seen/heard here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU0Imk2Bstg.
Beyond the tragedy of the situation, it is frightening to think of the threat that police brutality can pose particularly to the marginalized in our society. While there are certainly many good police officers that work tirelessly to ensure the safety of our population on a regular basis, from time to time incidents such as these do arise. What I think concerns me most about this is how so many of our clients could be potential Kelly Thomases on any given night. Even more scary is the fact that this incident occurred nearly a year ago, and is only beginning to garner wider media attention now. It is times like this that I really appreciate the work of Osha Neumann, an active advocate for the legal rights of the under-served in the East Bay and longtime friend of the Suitcase Clinic.
Any thoughts on the matter?
Your article states he was known to be non-violent. How and by whom was this known? Did that officer know? I am not an advocate of this or any other police department, and I think that all cases of police brutality need to be taken seriously, but I watched the video and I only saw two real instances of what i would call execessive force. The first was the first cop who hit Kelly because he would not comply, and the second was the officer who hit him in the head with the flashlight when he was down. Neither instance should be cause for murder charges. How would those officers have known that kelly was so seriously injured when he had enough energy to be tazed multiple times and continue to yell and resist handcuffs. If you are yelling you are breathing. I think this has been blown way out of proportion by kellys family and the media. Would it have been better if the officers had not subdued Kelly so he could either harm one of the officers or ran off into the night and possibly hurt someone else who offended him. If Kelly’s family was so concerned for him and his illness why was he living on the street? It’s a shame about what happened and I think we do need to provide more services for those with mental illness but we should not put all of the blame for kellys death on these officers who were trying to protect themselves and their community.
Right on! These eeky freeky lily livered tree hugging humanitarian liberals always exaggerate. Any intelligeng person would realize that if the person is still breathing, then *obviously* no such thing as excessive force could possibly have been used been used.