On Sunday I had the opportunity to witness an amazing display of principle and courage. As many of you know, our neighbors to the south in Anaheim had the misfortune of yet another police killing of 25-year-old Manuel Diaz who was unarmed. Diaz is the 7th person killed by Anaheim cops this year. The killing sparked neighborhood protests, one of which I attended outside the Anaheim police station.
A group of anarchist protesters armed with short sticks approached police on horses in front of the police station where Anaheim Crusader Teresa Smith was standing and protesting. Teressa’s son, Cesar Cruz, was another victim who died at the hands of the APD in 2009. She’s been protesting and advocating for peace and justice every Sunday outside the Anaheim police station for the past two years.
The anarchists were carrying short broom sticks and had their faces covered with bandannas. As they approached, Teressa told the angry group of anarchist to put down the sticks and protest peacefully. Marlena Carrillo and Shelly Kearney with Kelly’s Army showed up to support Teressa and also encouraged the angry protesters to stand down.
The angry group calmed down and the rest of the protest went peacefully from that point on. No broken windows, no rocks or bottles, although the police did arrest several people for no apparent reason.
Sunday’s protest ended peacefully despite the ARMY of cops there prepared to maim and kill. That’s a direct result of the courage of a group of principled women who were driven by peace to advocate for peace.
By 4F Friend and Beverly Hills Vice Mayor John Mirisch
Kelly Thomas changed everything.
As someone who believes that local government is the best form of democracy — after all, it’s the closest to the people — I recognize that it can be among the most frustrating forms of government when it fails us. We almost have come to expect government for and by special interests from our state and federal legislative bodies, but when the system doesn’t work locally, when it doesn’t listen, when it doesn’t put the residents first, it’s almost as if it’s a betrayal at the hands of our own neighbors. Those are the times when local government represents the antithesis of what Community (with a capital “C”) should be all about.
When the system doesn’t work locally, the response is often for people to throw up their figurative arms and figuratively sigh that old adage: “You can’t fight City Hall.”
Read the rest of “Thanks to Kelly Thomas, Fullerton’s Future Is Now”
Here’s some old footage of a Fullerton anti-police brutality protest from last summer. Notice how hundreds of protesters marched through the streets in a brief display of free speech with a hint of civil disobedience.
Also notice that there were no cops. No show of force. No body armor. No tactical pepper rounds. No beanbag shotguns. And no violence.
Contrast that to Anaheim last night, where hundreds of cops lined up in full body armor, arguably igniting tensions and transforming a raucous protest into a minor riot.
So what went wrong, and who caused it?
Get ready for this Friends: Jan Flory has pulled papers to run for city council in November! Yes indeedie, the former councilwoman and unhappy dog owner who supported every crappy Redevelopment staff driven boondoggle, fought every attempt to bring accountability to city government, who gave Patdown Pat McPension an award last year where she bemoaned the mistreatment of “our esteemed council.”
She even orchestrated a mean spirited attack on young kids riding their bikes on their own property.
Will she return the papers and begin to explain publicly why she supported the incompetent and criminal Culture of Corruption under the Three Dessicated Dinosaurs? I sure hope so.
As of July 20, 2012, A.M.
Barry Levinson
Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo
Matthew Hakim
Bruce Whitaker
Jane Rands
Don Bankhead
Travis Kiger
Jennifer Fitzgerald
Kiger and incumbents Whitaker are. Levinson, Jaramillo, Hakim, Rands, have all run before without success.
A man was found dead along the tracks at the Fullerton train station early Sunday morning. It was a 30 year-old Cypress man named Sean Moses.
Early speculation was that he had been initially struck by a train has not been verified and questions about when the actor and former junior high basketball coach actually died remain unanswered although an autopsy has been performed. Apparently he had been celebrating a friend’s birthday in downtown Fullerton on Saturday night.
A memorial has emerged at the north depot platform in eerie proximity to the location where Kelly Thomas’s is located.
Naturally, we will be looking into this as well and will keep the friends informed.
Citizen Committee Seeks Civilian Oversight of Fullerton Police Department in the Wake of Beating Death of Kelly Thomas, Reports of Abuse by Officers, Recent and Impending Lawsuits against FPD.
by Alex Stoffer
The Police Oversight Proposal Committee (POPC) will host a public presentation on methods of police oversight (tonight) Wednesday, July 11, 2012 from 6:30 to 8:00 pm at the Fullerton Public Library Conference Center. The public are invited to attend. There is no admission charge.
Citizen Oversight committees are composed of community members who review complaints, look into claims of misconduct and harassment, and investigate instances of excessive force.
Cal Watchdog Editor’s note: This is the second part of a three-part series on how the homeless and mentally ill are treated in California. Part One was about the Kelly Thomas beating and death.
By Tori Richards
Welcome to 450 Bauchet St., a 10-acre compound in the heart of downtown Los Angeles that is the world’s biggest jail. Known as Twin Towers, it has a population greater than many small towns, with 3,911 inmates, 900 staff, and even its own hospital. But it also has another distinction: the world’s largest mental institution.
Housed in one wing and encompassing four floors, the mental health ward tends to approximately 1,200 inmates with psychiatric problems. Several hundred more of the most severe cases are located in the hospital.
California is now a state where the police — not doctors or counselors — are the front lines to millions of mentally ill who have no other recourse than to end up in the jails.
“Sheriff Baca has frequently commented that the mentally ill belong in a mental institution,” said Capt. Mike Parker. “In law enforcement we deal with things because other aspects of society have failed. You have a system not addressing the need. “In the end, law enforcement is the last stop. We’re not looking for that responsibility; it was given to us.”
A breakdown in the system has led to a large population of the mentally ill who turn to crime or simply wander the streets homeless, a recipe for disaster.
Just look at the case of Kelly Thomas, a 37-year-old schizophrenic homeless man who belonged in a mental care facility rather than on the streets.
Click here to read more.
I’ll see you there.
By William Zdan:
The term “Pollice Verso” means (roughly) “thumbs down”. It’s in reference to the (albeit incorrect) traditional depiction of a Roman emperor giving the “thumbs down” signal that dictated the fate of a vulnerable/defeated fighter…usually a slave or other “expendable” that was forced into brutal exhibition.
I’ve toyed with the phrase, changing it to “Police Verso”..in obvious reference to the despicable actions that took place in Fullerton last year. In my painting, Dick Jones plays the part of a distant and ineffectual Caesar. He thumbs the fate of the unseen victim in smug disinterest, not even allowing his glaze to meet the atrocity for which he shares ownership. A panel of piggish spectators oversee the event, in uncontrolled animalistic enthusiasm.When watching a television report with Dick Jones last year, I was disheartened by the comments he had made about the murder. “I don’t know why he died” was the comment from Jones that affected me the most. Jones made a point to boast about his war-time efforts and how much worse, non-fatal injuries had been experienced there. Jones, we know and YOU know why he died. And it wasn’t just because of the fierce bludgeoning that he received by your endeared law-enforcement brethren. He died, Jones, because of a culture that still treats other human beings as “expendable”. Because people like Kelly are easily marginalized. Homeless people, especially mentally ill homeless people, clearly don’t count to Jones…and he did not create that sentiment, he just reflects it. Just as the slaves and expendables of the Roman Empire could have their humanity stripped of them by a blood-thirsty crowd, eager to do so…so was Kelly Thomas rendered a worthless item by those people we trust to protect the rest of us who do “count”. As I heard Jones speak, I thought (as I often do), “we have not progressed as a society. We are no different than Rome”.
Despite the (much needed) height of the soapbox upon which I like to stand relative to this topic, I cannot dismiss my own contribution to the negative and destructive culture in which I actively participate. So…the pawn/villian in my painting takes the form of my own image. Shamefully turned away from the viewer, I still raise my tool of destruction above my pig-like visage. I still perform for the pigs and am obedient to the tyrants of norms and expectations. I still pass by countless expendables, which whom I ironically share so much commonality.
I spent much of my young adulthood studying and working with the mentally ill. I worked at occupational, psycho-social rehab facilities for schizophrenic people during college. I even interned at a psychiatric prison for 6 months. During that time, I imagined that my idealism and self-congratulatory understanding of those emotionally suffering individuals would allow me to make a difference. Instead, I’ve become homogenized, like the dizzying amount of conscientiousness introverts that allow people like Jones to have any say in the direction of our society. Despite the fact that Kelly walked the same blocks that I walk every week, I had never even seen him…and wouldn’t have remembered if I had. I stretch my own rubber glove over my hand every day…keeping my fellow man at a distance…careful not to touch the blood that I shared in spilling. Because if I (a so-called idealistic artist with fair exposure to the troubles of the mentally ill) can willfully ignore injustice for the sake of convenience, I am just as filthy a pig as Ramos.
So, I am the ultimate executioner and THAT illness is worse than Kelly’s was. I am the baton-waving brute in my painting. I was never so aware of this until I met Kelly’s mom yesterday. I stood next to her as she looked at the painting that I shat out for this important event. I had jumped onto a cause for someone I never met or cared about. Nowhere in the painting is Kelly’s personal injustice really depicted. Rather, in the form that fell Rome, mine is a self-indulgent view. And here was this man’s mother, looking upon my painting about..well, about something to do with being angry and selfish and pointing fingers, I guess. She said to me, “he was really a good kid”. I bet he was.