Kelly Thomas Beating Sheds Light On American Police Force

By Paul Adams

On July 5, 2011, a few Los Angeles locals reported that a homeless man was loitering around the Fullerton Transit hub, looking into the windows and rattling the doors of parked cars. Two Fullerton PD officers, Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, responded to check out the scene.

The subsequent encounter between the police officers and the homeless man, recorded from a security camera at a bus depot, was released to the public a few days ago. The footage shows the man, identified as Kelly Thomas, a mentally ill person who struggled with schizophrenia, in a minor exchange with the officers. But the exchange quickly escalated into a gruesome scene in which Ramos and a few other cops taser Thomas, and bashed his body and head with batons and mag lights. As a total of six policemen surrounded him, Thomas slurred for his father as blood from his punctured lungs suffocated him.

Thomas was hospitalized and on life support with internal bleeding, broken jaw bones, head trauma and punctured lungs. He died five days later from oxygen deprivation to his brain and other cranial complications.

The following September, Officer Ramos was charged with second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter while his partner Cicinelli was charged with involuntary manslaughter and excessive force.

The trial is on-going, yet recent evidence has yielded concern from the Thomas family and the general community.  Although Ramos could be sentenced to as much as life in prison, Ron Thomas, the victim’s father, and other supporters have doubts as to the severity of the final sentence or even if the charge will be reduced before the trial is finished.

If history is any indication, the demands for justice may fall on deaf ears: offending police officers have a long history of receiving minor slaps on the wrist for crimes that would jail any other civilian for years.

Just five hours upstate, in Oakland, on the early morning of New Year’s Day 2009, Oscar Grant was detained for a disturbance on the BART (the bay area transit), and while lying face-down and  handcuffed on the cement floor of the station, police officer Johannes Mehserle took out his gun and fired into Grant’s  back, killing him. Though the act was ruled as involuntary manslaughter by the court – in which the sentencing could have handed him 14 years in prison – Mehserle was handed a two year term  and was eventually let out in 11 months with probation. He recently testified to get his badge back and return to active duty. To put that in perspective, the two police officers who were convicted for the renowned 1992 Rodney King beating were sentenced 2.5 years each.

It seems much of the legal sentiment has shifted in the post-9/11 climate, in a distrusting world where civilian rights have been sacrificed for the promise of safety. It’s impossible to say whether the rise in police abuse coincides with the rise of camera phones and internet culture or if it was always there, but the current state is nevertheless ominous.

Just looking across the Atlantic, Germany – a nation 80 million strong – had their entire police force shoot only 89 bullets throughout the entirety of 2011. 49 of which were just warning shots. Meanwhile – just last month – American police officers eclipsed that mark by firing 90 rounds at an unarmed 19 year old kid in the aftermath of a police chase on the California 101 freeway.

The inefficient and aggressive disposition of the police force calls into question whether the American police training system is adequate enough to graduate ordinary people into law enforcers. Perhaps a G.E.D., a few months in training, and a 90 minute, multiple-choice MMPI-2 psychology test isn’t sufficient enough to warrant a gun and a badge to an individual. Because when you find Manuel Ramos needing five other physically fit policemen to help him detain a famished, mentally-ill man, the case of police abuse shifts from a question of etiquette to a question of competence.