Here is an interview with a young man who was at the Transportation Center the night of July 5th, 2011. He was waiting for a bus.
His story has the ring of truth to it, and is interesting because it suggests several interesting facts. First, according to this account an “Hispanic” officer had Kelly seated on a curb and had his baton in his hands during some kind of discussion that lasted several minutes, at least; at which point Kelly got up and ran. He was quickly caught from behind, punched repeatedly and spent the rest of his “altercation” with FPD face down. There was no death-struggle between a superhuman drug-crazed freak and six officers grimly fighting for their lives.
There’s is no doubt from this account that the first two cops had difficulty subduing Thomas – most likely because they couldn’t get both hands cuffed behind his back. As the witness suggests, this could have been because the first officer was on top of Kelly from behind and Kelly’s arm was pinned beneath him. After that it was just a gang mugging.
Dedicated commenter “corrupt” gave me great idea a while ago about applying a sort of Hippocratic Oath to our police here in Fullerton. They already take an oath of some kind which, based on recent events, doesn’t seem to have done much good. Nevertheless, I persevere in my attempt to get our boys in blue to toe the line – before we replace them with boys in green.
Here’s my oath:
1. First, I will do no harm to those I am supposed to protect and serve. This includes perpetrating no credit card fraud, assault or sexual battery, kidnapping, theft, homicide, or encouraging suicide while in custody.
2. I will obey the same laws that apply to people who pay for my salary and pension.
3. I will not make public statements that are intentionally misleading, or that are outright fabrications.
4. I will not accept free food or drink at downtown bars.
5. I will not fabricate evidence, falsify reports or commit perjury in order to prosecute the innocent; I will not cause others to do same.
6. I will not consider being recorded by citizens in the exercise of my job duties a reason to illegally confiscate recording devices; nor will I cause said citizens to be assaulted, arrested, or prosecuted (see 4, above) for exercising their rights as free men and women.
7. I will not knowingly permit any of my fellow officers to violate items 1-6; I will immediately report any such violations to my superiors. Superiors will do likewise – up to the civilian immediately in charge of the Police Department.
If you have anything you’d like to add please feel free to elaborate, as always, in the comments thread.
See that guy over there? He doesn't have a bomb. But he might someday!
Here’s a comical OC Register post from today. I say comical somewhat tongue-in-cheek because almost all Register posts and articles are comical these days.
According to this one, the intrepid journalist Doug Irvine tried to squeeze some information out of the DA – such as the names of the cops who beat on Kelly Thomas’s head like a kettle drum with their taser handles.
Two officers were treated for broken bones. I mean there was a bomb. I mean....aw Hell let's just go get donuts...
The response from our Do-nothing DA? Oooooh! We have so many scary threats these days that we just can’t say anything. Well, there was one, at least!
Of course over at the the beleaguered FPD, spokesbozo Andrew Goodrich supplied his comrades at The Register with a scary bomb threat story (nothing was found, of course). Poor babies.
Jeezus, you wouldn’t think such heavily-armed and highly trained experts would be so easily intimidated, now would you? Apparently they are weak as kittens when the chips are down, even with their McKinley vests, and this justifies the ongoing secrecy. The logic is inescapable, right?
The funny thing is to observe how the Register writer, rather than take the useless DA and FPD to task for their obvious lack of transparency, turns his article into a weepy sob story about the poor, defenseless cops. And of course the fact of the DA spending more time on threats to his office because of his lackluster investigation than on the investigation itself just drips with irony. Could that irony really be lost on Mr. Irving. It would appear so.
Here’s the money quote that references our humble blog:
The District Attorney’s Office also cited as a threat an entry on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog, which has dug into the Kelly Thomas case: “Someone should make these officers contact information and addresses public.”
Blogger Travis Kiger said that wasn’t a threat, and said he hasn’t seen any specific threats on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog. He challenged the District Attorney Office’s decision to keep the names secret.
“They release the names of suspected criminals every single day,” he said. “I don’t understand in this case how it would be any different.”
The District Attorney’s Office is “looking into” the one alleged threat that it received, Chief of Staff Susan Kang Schroeder said. Fullerton Police are “taking the threats seriously” but have no active criminal investigations into them, Goodrich said.
“They’ve all been anonymous in nature,” he said. “They would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to track.”
You’ve got to be kidding. Just goes to show you the extent to which the “law enforcement” establishment will go to protect its safety (or pretend to) while blowing off our safety – from them! And when the cops release information about suspects do they give a rat’s ass about their safety? Of course they don’t.
So did the FPD really receive a bomb threat? Who knows? But it’s gotten impossible to believe a single solitary thing that emanates from Andrew Goodrich’s mouth.
In the wake of a rolling tsunami of scandals, cover-ups, and abuse of its own citizens I have been hearing increased calls to disband the department altogether and bring in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
Apparently the issue is not just FPD-fatigue and the brutal costs their misbehavin’ is going to cost the taxpayers; nor even police misconduct in general – since the OCSD has had its own share of bad behavior in recent years.
Anything you can do I can do better...
No, the prime motivation will be the comparatively low cost per capita that the OCSD charges its contract city partners for varying levels of service. Some have said that the City could easily save the General Fund $10-15 million a year, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
Former Fullerton councilmember and current County Supervisor Shawn Nelson would be in a perfect position to help broker this deal
So could we be seeing the streets of Fullerton patrolled by guys in green? Perhaps. Why not? The current police force has disgraced itself so badly in the past few moths that from a public relations standpoint there would never be a better time.
As has been pointed out previously on this blog, there are rules for us and then there are rules for the police. Stuff that they do would land us in jail with a hefty bail; they get paid administrative leave and walk the streets free men.
Those six guys over there won't talk to me. I've done all I can do...
Here’s another example of the distorted double standard: the so-called “investigation” of the Kelly Thomas death being concocted by our Do-nothing DA. We are told by the cop apologists to patiently await that magical moment when Mr. Rackauckas unveils the fruits of his labors.
I honestly can't remember...
But what might those labors have involved? We have been told that the investigation didn’t start until two days after the homicide. Two full days. Did the cops turn in their bloodied uniforms for analysis? Did they turn over their Tasers for forensic examination of finger prints and blood samples? Have they produced recording devices? Was the homicide scene secured for examination? Anybody want to take odds that none of this has occurred?
Ahm a doctah! Them injuries was slight...
I’m pretty sure if you or I bashed somebody’s head in all that evidence would have been secured, post haste, and we’d be cooling our heels in Theo Lacy, slam-bang, and no bail for you, buddy.
Are we supposed to scared?
But this is our new police state, brought to us courtesy of geriatric assclowns (thanks for the use, Joe S.) Jones, Bankhead and McKinley. It wasn’t enough for them to put the City’s finances at risk through extravagant pension giveaways. Oh no! They oversaw a veritable culture of corruption in the Fullerton Police Department, the depth of which the citizens and taxpayers are only now beginning to see.
Oh, and yeah. In this culture some of these miscreants believed they could get away with murder.
Yahoo News led off today with the doings in little Fullerton, California, here, related to the stories of police brutality against Veth Mam and of course, Kelly Thomas. Here’s somebody called Mike Ritto, President of the Downtown Business Association, moaning about the hurt put on local retailers:
“They’re telling people, ‘Don’t go to Fullerton.’ Nobody here did anything wrong. Why should the retailers suffer?” said Ritto, speaking of the protesters who have packed public forums and marched outside the police station every Saturday for a month.
Ahem. Nobody here did anything wrong? Why should the retailers suffer? Uh, dunno, Mike. Maybe it’s the bad karma associated with devil’s deal downtown Fullerton has made with an out of control police force.
I can mindread, and yes they thought they had the right man!
Naturally we hear from FPD spokeszit Andrew Goodrich, who, inexplicably, remains spokeszit despite a string of lies and half-truths that would have made a NAZI Ministry of Propaganda functionary’s heart sing:
Goodrich, the police spokesman, said allegations that the officers in the Mam case perjured themselves were false because they believed when they testified that they had arrested the right person.
Oh, really? False charges of perjury? Really, Andy? You really want to go there? Of course the charges are perfectly true; either that or your union pals are so f-ing incompetent that they belong in institutionalized care somewhere. Which is it?
See that guy over there? He didn't do it.
And here is Deputy DA Rebecca Reed, casually explaining that the whole Mam story told by the cops was pluasible:
“I thought it was reasonable that Veth Mam had been involved in this altercation before filming,” she said. “The video did not show the whole story.”
Say what? No, Becky, the laws of time and space were not suddenly suspended by the evil Mam. What she meant to say was: “we are told to go along with the cops story, no matter how ludicrous it might be; we have no compunction about charging and prosecuting an innocent man; we don’t give a damn about justice; my only concern is that this loss is going to hurt my record.”
From the very beginning of the Kelly Thomas beating death at the hands, Tasers, fist and feet of the Fullerton Police Department, that department’s spokeshole, Sergeant Andrew Goodrich told the public that the fateful incident was intiated with a phone call: a phone call to the dispatcher stating that somebody was breaking into cars in the vicinity of the Transportation Center.
From the get go, the story sounded absurd to people who knew Kelly Thomas and who averred that Thomas wasn’t violent or a thief. And of course to a public that has come to understand that Sergeant Goodrich seems incapable of telling the smallest bit of truth, the idea that there was a call at all became a matter of doubt.
Tellingly, the police have issued no information about this mysterious phone call and who made it, and so far they have given no indication that they have the slightest iota of evidence that anybody was breaking into cars at all.
This is important, because it lends credence to the idea that the phone call, if there was one, was made in collaboration with the police themselves. This could implicate both caller and cops in a conspiracy. A conspiracy to do what? Since the result of the incident was the bludgeoning death of a harmless man, that question is almost to horrible to contemplate. But at the very least the facts lead to the reasonable deduction that the conspiracy, if it existed, was meant to deprive Kelly Thomas of his civil rights – a violation of the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment right, to be specific.
Of course making a false report to the police is some sort of crime (although Goodrich has yet to make an honest report to the public, which seems to be A-OK to his higher ups and the City Council). So somebody should be in big trouble for that alone.
Was there a call? If so, who made the call and why? I don’t know, but I admonish the Do-nothing DA and the Federal investigators to find out. You can bet Ron Kelly’s attorney Garo Mardirossian and his investigators will. Soon.
The other day FFFF noted the eerie silence of the offspring of former Fullerton activist Ralph Kennedy when it came to the bludgeoning murder of the homeless man, Kelly Thomas at the hands of the Fullerton Police Department. We cynically noted that Rusty Kennedy’s OC Human Relations Commission relies upon the goodwill of police departments to lobby County government to continue funding this useless organization. Sharon Kennedy, who continues to publish the moribund and yellowing Fullerton Observer seems to have lost her moral compass, too.
The Kennedy siblings are not important themselves except that they are representative of Old Liberalism in Fullerton, and its total disregard for the killing of a completely helpless human being by the cops.
Here is Rusty expending three minutes of verbal gas saying absolutely nothing and trying as hard as he can to avoid speaking the truth: that the Fullerton Police deliberately killed a harmless, mentally ill man. Enjoy the end where Mr. Kennedy offers the services of his impotent operation, as if the cops who committed this crime against Kelly Thomas simply needed some sensitivity training courtesy of the Human Relations Commission.
Rusty, like his Collaboratin’ pals, obviously have been bought and paid for. But I promise one thing. When Kennedy comes hat in hand to the Board of Supervisors next spring I will be there to help pull the financial plug on this worthless hypocrite.
FPD spokeshole Andrew Goodrich is now peddling bull so fast it has crept up over his hip waders and into his britches.
His latest rasher of shit is the story that cop Kenton Hampton roughed up and mistakenly arrested the wrong guy last October. He and his buddies cooked up a story in their reports and had the DA prosecute Veth Mam for obstruction of justice. Of course the jury saw the same video we posted here and acquitted Mam.
Goodrich’s latest fib is that the cop accidentally nabbed the wrong guy – someone who didn’t jump on a cop’s back. But anybody viewing the video knows that’s just bull. Check it out. You can see Hampton roll up and confront the crowd. Hampton clearly had no knowledge of anything that happened previous to his arrival. He set his eyes on a guy he saw video recording the altercation and hit him in the face, then starts throwing him around like a rag doll.
Goodrich wants us to believe that in the chaos of the moment the brave boys in blue picked on the wrong guy. Well that’s just a bald-face lie.
Now Mam has a lawyer. The same lawyer as the dad of FPD fatal beating victim Kelly Thomas. FPD is looking at assault and false arrest; and Fullerton’s self-insurance fund looks to get even smaller.
For some reason the DA hasn’t prosecuted the FPD liars including an officer named Frank Nguyen, for perjury, but that charge may be coming soon, although the incompetence of DA spokesholetress Susan Schroeder does not inspire confidence. Let’s hope somebody impresses upon our do-nothing DA the importance of being honest on the witness stand. After all, isn’t he telling us we can’t see the Thomas murder video because it might taint witnesses. Hah!
P.S. The DA supposedly had the video in their possession a month before the June/July trial and decided to try this dog of a case, anyway. I don’t know who made this expensive decision, but here’s the roll call of DA personnel who worked on the case at one time or another:
Unchained Melody…
