Justice Miscarried

According to the Los Angeles Times: "An Orange County jury Monday found two former Fullerton police officers accused of killing a schizophrenic homeless man, Kelly Thomas, not guilty."

~~~

On July 5, 2011, at about 8:30 PM, officers of the Fullerton, California Police Department responded to a call that someone was vandalizing cars near the Fullerton Transportation Center.

Responding officers approached a suspect, later identified as Kelly Thomas, a locally-known 37 year-old, schizophrenic homeless person. Thomas was detained but failed to prove fully cooperative. Officers then attempted to search and physically restrain Thomas but he became resistant and combative and, as is often said in law enforcement circles: "the fight was on".

At the end of the fight involving Thomas and six Fullerton police officers, Thomas was unconscious and had suffered severe injuries to his head, face, and neck. Paramedics responded and transported Thomas, first to St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton and, later, to the University of California - Irvine Medical Center.

Kelly Thomas never regained consciousness after the fight and, five days later, was removed from life support. The Orange County Coroner would later list Thomas' cause of death as: "asphyxia caused by mechanical chest compression with blunt cranial-facial injuries sustained during physical altercation with law enforcement."

During a subsequent press conference, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said that the Coroner had stated that the injuries to Thomas' face and head contributed to his death. Also contributing to his death were brain injuries, facial and rib fractures, and the extensive bruising and abrasions he suffered during the beating.

After an exhaustive investigation, the District Attorney ultimately filed criminal charges against two of the six officers involved in the incident: Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, both of whom were eventually fired by the City of Fullerton. Manuel Ramos was charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and Jay Cicinelli was charged with involuntary manslaughter and felony use of excessive force.

In July 2012, the defendants were arraigned and held to answer. The trial recently concluded and, after deliberating for less than a day, the jury found both defendants not guilty.

I think the jurors erred -and grievously- in their verdict.

~~~

Having previously served for a total of over 25 years as a reserve officer, officer, corporal, and sergeant with the Long Beach, California Police Department (an agency considerably larger than that of Fullerton PD) I am not at all quick to immediately second-guess or be overly-critical of the actions of police officers, particularly when I was not present at an incident and not attempting to deal with or supervise it personally.

For this reason I have previously made many comments in many conversations and on various public forums encouraging people to be patient and to withhold judgment until the conclusion of the several investigations into this incident. Once the investigations concluded, and Ramos and Cicinelli were charged criminally, I likewise made many comments in many conversations and on various public forums encouraging people to be patient and to withhold judgment about them until the verdicts had been announced. I did say, however, that if they were convicted that they should be punished to the fullest extent that law and policy allowed.

The verdicts have now been announced and I am deeply disappointed with them. I have exhaustively studied the evidence made available to the public and I think it fully supported convictions on the charges in this case.

~~~

The evidence demonstrated that Kelly Thomas had no drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of his death. The evidence demonstrated that Thomas was diagnosed with schizophrenia and that at least one of the officers who confronted him that night had dealt with him previously. The evidence demonstrated that, just before the fight, former officer Ramos had put on latex gloves and asked Thomas "Now see my fists? They are getting ready to fuck you up."

As a former police officer I have been in many such fights with people on the street. Sometimes I had help and sometimes I did not. Sometimes the suspects were on drugs (including PCP, when that was still a major problem for us) and some of them were severely emotionally disturbed, mentally ill, or both.

None of them ever required six officers to control and restrain one person. None of them justified using a Taser as a blunt instrument to strike a person in the head and facial area (which is never an authorized target for striking in any case), let alone to do so eight times. None of them required kneeing a person in the head (which is never an authorized target for striking in any case), let alone to do so twice.

I do not know what Fullerton PD's use of force policies were at the time of this incident, but my own police training concerning Tasers informed me that if multiple proper attempts to temporarily disable a person using a Taser had little or no effect, that I was to transition to another authorized tool or tactic, not use the Taser as some sort of hammer to repeatedly strike the person's head or face.

I do not know what Fullerton PD's use of force policies were at the time of this incident, but my own police training concerning weaponless defense informed me that there were specific authorized target areas to strike on a person's body and that the head and face were not among them, let alone a target I should repeatedly strike with my knee. 

These specific tactics directly contributed to Thomas' death because they caused the "blunt cranial-facial injuries" and the "brain injury" that the Coroner documented in his report.

Sometimes, when several officers are trying to hold a combative suspect down to get him or her into custody, serious injury can occur due to the cumulative weight of one or two officers on the suspect's back or chest. This is never an intended result of officers trying to work in concert to get someone into custody. In this case, however, "asphyxia caused by mechanical chest compression" apparently combined with Thomas' severe head, facial, and brain injuries to cause death where it would not likely have occurred otherwise.

A street fight is never a pretty sight and is rarely completely bloodless. Officers and suspects alike generally walk away injured to some degree. Officers usually shrug minor injuries off. I still have a scar from a wound that probably should have been treated at the time but was not. Making light of such injuries was all but expected back then: "Wash off the blood, scrub it with some betadine, slap a bandaid on it, and get back to work. The calls are backing up".

One thing that is far outside of my personal experience throughout my entire career as a police officer, however, is the malicious and intentional infliction of the sort of severe injuries that Kelly Thomas received during his fight with Fullerton PD that night.     

I believe that Ramos demonstrated clear and malicious intent when, before the fight, he stated: "Now see my fists? They are getting ready to fuck you up." In my experience, threats of physical violence are rarely an effective way to de-escalate a situation. Quite the contrary and particularly when dealing with someone who appears to be struggling with some emotional disturbance or mental illness. Such people typically do not process information in the same manner that more rational people do or can. Professional police officers in California are trained to recognize such signs and to adapt their tactics accordingly. Ramos clearly did not.

I believe that Cicinelli demonstrated clear and malicious intent in the improper manner in which he used the Taser on Thomas' head and face and in kneeing Thomas' twice in the head. Not simply in inflicting those injuries, but in the clearly callous and repeated manner in which he did so. I have personally investigated hundreds of incidents of police use of force. The vast majority of them were thoroughly justified. I do not believe this one was. I believe the extreme severity of Thomas' head, brain, and facial injuries alone indicates a completely callous and malicious disregard for Kelly Thomas' life.  

I think this clear and malicious intent should have been sufficient to support guilty verdicts against both of these defendants and I remain extremely disappointed that the jury did not think so as well.

John B. Greet is Long Beach native and retired LBPD sergeant who currently lives in the Pacific Northwest.