Written by Typical Police brutality this time another innocent victim gets killed at the hands of those who are supposed to protect us.
FULLERTON, Calif. (AP) — In the nearly two decades since his son descended into madness, Ron Thomas has worried every day that the schizophrenic 37-year-old would die of exposure or illness on the streets. He never imagined the end would come in a violent confrontation with police. The death last month was the end of a trajectory that began when Kelly Thomas was in his early 20s and started showing the first signs of what would later be diagnosed as schizophrenia: he shuttled between addresses, preferred to sleep on the floor and stopped showering. In treatment, Thomas did well and was able to hold down a job — but when he stopped taking his pills, he disappeared onto the streets.
Last month, he was sitting on a bench at the Fullerton Transportation Center, a hub for buses and commuter trains where homeless people congregate, when six police officers arrived to investigate reports of a man burglarizing cars nearby. Police said he ran when they tried to search his backpack and that he resisted arrest.
The incident was captured by a bystander with a cell phone, and bus surveillance tape released Monday showed agitated witnesses describing how officers beat Thomas and used a stun gun on him repeatedly as he cried out for his father.
On the cell phone video, a man can be heard screaming over a fast, clicking sound that those on the tape identify as a stun gun being deployed.
Thomas was taken off life support five days after the July 5 altercation. His father said Wednesday he was stunned when he learned police officers caused his son’s severe head and neck injuries.
“When I arrived at the hospital to see him, I honestly thought that gang bangers had got a hold of him like the cowards sometimes do and just beat him with a baseball bat in the face,” he said. “Immediately my thoughts were to get with Fullerton police … and I didn’t learn until a certain amount of hours later the truth. That put me in absolute shock.”
A police spokesman, Sgt. Andrew Goodrich, said the case was an isolated incident.
“We have a good department full of good individuals,” he said. “We’ve made more than half-a-million law enforcement contacts over the past 4.5 years … This is the only instance of this kind that’s happened.”
Goodrich said officers receive training on how to deal with the mentally ill and the homeless. But an attorney representing the department, Michael D. Schwartz, said that “public perception of officers’ trying to control a combative, resistive suspect rarely conform to those officers’ training, experiences, and what those officers were experiencing at the time or reality.”
The revelations have caused growing outrage in this quiet college town. More than 70 people spoke at the City Council meeting Wednesday, and a city councilwoman called for the resignation of the police chief. Thomas’ father and others were planning a protest outside the police station this weekend, the second in as many weeks.
“My son needs a voice,” he said. “Now, the people have become Kelly’s voice and, yeah, I’m leading the charge.”
Kelly Thomas was an outgoing child who loved to play the guitar, participated in Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts and aspired to be a wildland firefighter, said his father, who raised him alone after he and Thomas’ mother divorced.
After his diagnosis, he went to a live-in facility that provided meals and monitored his medication, his father said. Thomas was able to hold down a job at a gas station and then a printing facility and even started to train with the California Department of Forestry and Protection.
But each time he began to improve, he stopped his medications and wound up back on the streets, moving between Yorba Linda, Placentia, Fullerton and Cypress — all places where he had once lived or had family and friends. One of the hardest parts of his death has been hearing their son described as homeless, the father said.
On the day of the beating, bystanders said Thomas was approached by two officers and ran from them. Bus surveillance video showed witnesses talking about the confrontation to the driver of a bus that pulled up minutes later.
In the grainy, black-and-white video, a woman who appears upset says: “The cops are kicking this poor guy over there. … He’s almost halfway dead.”
A male witness says the man, identified as Thomas, was sitting on a bench when he was approached by two officers and ran from them. The man says police used a stun gun on Thomas six times.
“They caught him, pound his face, pound his face against the curb … and they beat him up,” the man said. “They beat him up, and then all the cops came and they hogtied him, and he was like, ‘Please God! Please Dad!’”
The police department has turned over the investigation to the district attorney’s office and placed on paid administrative leave six officers involved in the beating. The FBI also launched a probe into whether the officers violated Thomas’ civil rights in the incident.
