Posted on 08/01/2011 7:32:26 PM PDT by Nachum
The death of a homeless man fatally injured during a fight with Fullerton police has captured the attention of the community and affected morale in the department.
Kelly Thomas, 37, who was schizophrenic, died July 10, five days after the confrontation with six police officers at the Fullerton Transportation Center.
Fullerton police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said the department has received hundreds of phone calls and e-mails from across California and hundreds turned out to protest Saturday morning at the Fullerton police station.
"It's not pleasant to see people in front of the police station calling the officers 'murderers,'" Goodrich said.
"We understand the community is outraged and concerned and what we've said all along is the incident happened, but the chief called for an outside agency to do a transparent investigation of what happened that night," Goodrich said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
I've always had the impression that "old time cops" routinely "worked over" suspects.It was called "the third degree;" you know, rubber hoses and all that stuff.
Big tyrants can never get any real traction without the aid of thousands of little tyrants.
Something to remember in the days ahead.
Folks better get control of their own communities and the lesser magistrates, post haste.
That’s not my name, dumbass.
The individual concerned should already have a valid last will and testament, as the police will prompty terminate
the individual/threat.
Reminder bump. I’m thinking I need to send thank you notes to the sheriffs who tortured me on the ground for about five minutes ... I’m feeling lucky. ;-(
So how do ERs and mental health facilities manage to deal with violent patients without inflicting serious injury or death?
I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing happening at the hands of health care workers.
So how do ERs and mental health facilities manage to deal with violent patients without inflicting serious injury or death?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a thing happening at the hands of health care workers.
Funny you should say this. My best friend is an art therapist, and she worked on the seriously mentally disturbed ward at Billings Hospital, which is located on the University of Chicago campus on the south side of Chicago. In particular, this ward had many schizophrenic patients (interestingly, a fair amount were students and college profs from the nearby U of C campus). They had ward watchers on duty all the time for when patients acted out or got violent. My friend was on the ward when one of these patients attacked one of the shrinks who had been backed up to a wall, and they had to tear the patient off of the worker. They also used restraints when a patient got violent. So don’t tell me about how ER workers, etc. do it; usually they have police backup if they think a mental type is dangerous, and in the wards they have workers to handle such matters. You need to get on more wards yourself to find out the reality. By the way, most wards have locked doors. Even in nursing homes, some of the more disturbed geriatrics get violent, and you’d be surprised at the strength they can still show when infuriated. At many nursing homes they will isolate on one side of the dining room those that are more deranged, as they will pick fights or throw food. Get with it, get in reality land.
“That’s not my name, dumbass.”
Then remove it from this thread. Call yourself something else, although the attitude will stay the same, won’t it.
“Bad people with mental problems can still be a problem, wouldn’t you say?
I’d say a 135lb., 37 y.o. laying on the ground does not pose “a problem” to 6 LEOs equipped with tasers and night sticks. The fact that their chosen solution was murder shows how grossly incompetant they are.
Much of the problem is coming from Dept of Justice training initiatives like the DOJ's Preventing Violence Against Law Enforcement" initiative, as well as the federal encouragement of militarization of police depts.
Officer injuries and disability are a big issue for police departments these days. They do not want officers on disability over an injury resulting from having to subdue a suspect. Google "officer safety" training. To an increasing extent, training is focusing on making officer safety the #1 priority.
If officers are trained to think that "officer safety is priority #1", then that means that the safety of public interacting with officers is a lower priority, with predictable results. This is what you get when you transform a profession which had "To protect and to serve" as its motto, into just another union job.
His police were not unionized. That's a big part of the problem. The same factors that make it hard to fire bad teachers make it hard to fire bad cops on just the sergeant's decision that they are "getting out of line with the citizens". It thus takes a major incident to start things going to get rid of a bad cop.
Why are health care workers able to do what these police officers couldn't?
Face it, your heroes are in a heap of trouble. The FBI is investigating and the citizens of Fullerton are not happy. Here's a statute that may be relevant to the investigation:
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 13 > § 242
§ 242. Deprivation of rights under color of law
-snip-
and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Excellent points!!! I’d really love to know the answers to those questions.
He was a local fixture and well known.
He had a room where he could sleep whenever he wanted. He would come in and sleep in a car instead of a room because he was a ‘free spirit’. He did not want to be helped, and it is difficult if not impossible to commit someone against their will.
flaglady47 is a police groupie because one of her neighbors is a cop and he is nice to her.
If one of her neighbors was a nice Muslim, she would defend Al-Qaeda’s use of torture and murder against helpless people.
She worships Statism, but she thinks she is a law-and-order Conservative. Just like the Islam groupies on the Left, she will be among the first destroyed when her heroes take over with their brand of Sharia.
These thugs behind a badge are going to cover each others back to the detriment of the entire police force. That alone should explain why the people of Fullerton are angry with them.
As someone wrote earlier in this thread (paraphrasing) these thugs should be held to a higher standard than ordinary citizens.
Currently they hold themselves to a lower standard because to them and the city officials, it appears, think that it was perfectly fine to hold this homeless man down and beat the life out of him.
The officers other than the 6 under investigation should understand that the actions of the 6 officers reflect directly on them. If they can’t hold a higher standard to themselves, they don’t belong on the police force. It’s people like these that are keeping us from even pretending that our country is a Constitutional republic.
...Para-military police, Schutzstaffel...
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