Crime & Safety

VIDEO: Former Seal Beach Chief Asked to Resign In Scandal Over His Officers' Beating of Homeless Man

The firestorm of public outrage over schizophrenic Kelly Thomas death after Fullerton officers beat him has been fueled by video.

The beleaguered Fullerton police chief, fighting for his job amid outrage over the death a schizophrenic man who was Tasered and badly beaten in a scuffle with six officers, has roots in Los Alamitos and Seal Beach.

Fullerton Police Chief Michael Sellers served as Seal Beach’s police chief from 1997 to 2005, and before that he was a captain in Los Alamitos.

Now he may have to fight to remain at the helm of Fullerton’s Police Department. Fullerton City Councilwoman Sharon Quirk-Silva called on Sellers to resign today because of the way he handled the aftermath of the death of 37-year-old schizophrenic homeless man Kelly Thomas, the son of a former Orange County sheriff’s deputy. She accused Sellers of failing to take a public role in the case.

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The Fullerton Police Department is being investigated by both local and federal officials for its handling of the case. As bystanders watched last month, officers repeatedly beat and Tasered Thomas.

Quirk-Silva said Sellers should have been more in the public eye, explaining what happened July 5 during the arrest of Thomas, who was disconnected from life support days after his struggle with the officers.

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"I would have liked to see the police chief immediately on this
holding a news conference,'' Quirk-Silva said. "Certainly he needs to be the face of the Police Department."

Fullerton police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich has handled questions related to the death of Thomas.

However, Quirk-Silva went on to praise the chief for meeting with the Thomas family.

"I do appreciate that, I really do,'' she said. "And I feel he has
done an excellent job in that role. But our public wants answers, and as people don't get answers, I think the anger, and I would say the hysteria, would snowball.''

Tuesday night, 200 people packed a Fullerton City Council meeting, and more than a dozen people there called for Sellers to resign.

"Man up—step down,'' one woman said, and a man who said he witnessed the July 5 confrontation called it "a terrible murder.''

Ron Thomas, the dead man's father, attended the meeting and praised Quirk-Silva and Councilman Bruce Whitaker for demanding that the surveillance video of the incident be made public.

Fullerton Mayor F. Richard Jones and Councilman Pat McKinley, the city's former police chief, asked people to reserve judgment. The officers did nothing wrong in the way they confronted the combative suspect, said McKinley.

The officers involved are on paid leave for the duration of an Orange County district attorney's investigation.

According to police, Thomas struggled with the officers as they tried to arrest him at the Fullerton Transportation Center on suspicion of possessing stolen goods. They had received a report of a man trying to break into vehicles at the Metrolink parking lot.

A photo taken of him at the hospital shows his face grotesquely swollen.

His family took him off life-support July 10.

—City News Service


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