Police Officers murder homeless man with a mental illness, found 'not guilty'.

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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/07/closing-arguments-to-begin-in-trial-california-officers-accused-killing/
A 37-year-old California homeless man's death after a violent confrontation with police drew attention largely because of surveillance video that captured Kelly Thomas screaming for his father and begging for air as officers piled on him, struck him with batons and stunned him with a Taser.

In the courtroom, however, much of legal drama in the monthlong trial of two of those former officers has centered on Thomas' checkered past and his medical history as attorneys called dueling experts to help the jury decide if the officers' conduct alone killed him.

Former Fullerton police Officer Manuel Ramos, 39, has pleaded not guilty to one count of second-degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter. Former Cpl. Jay Cicinelli, 41, has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force.

Closing arguments in the case are scheduled to begin Tuesday.

The decision to charge a police officer with murder for actions taken while on duty is extremely rare — and particularly so in conservative Orange County. It's the first time prosecutors in the county have ever charged such a case, and its outcome is so critical that four-term District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has handled much of the trial himself.

Thomas' 2011 death galvanized local activists, who dubbed themselves "Kelly's Army" and led to the recall of three city council members and the departure of the Fullerton police chief.

Jurors have watched the 33-minute, grainy surveillance video repeatedly as they dissect the case. In it, Thomas can be heard screaming for his father nearly 30 times and cries out repeatedly that he can't breathe as six policemen fight to restrain him. The video was also synced with audio from the officers' body microphones.

The July 5 incident began with a routine call about a disheveled man jiggling the handles of parked cars in a Fullerton transit center.

Ramos himself had seven previous encounters with Thomas, who had also been written up for trespassing, urinating in a fountain, punching someone in the face, throwing large rocks and threatening the owner of a fruit stand with a metal pipe. Thomas' father has said his son suffered from schizophrenia.

In the video, Ramos can be heard trying to get Thomas to give his name and sit on the curb with his hands on his knees while another officer searches his backpack. Thomas is shirtless and has a huge, bushy beard and baggy pants.

When Thomas doesn't comply, Ramos puts on a pair of Latex gloves, makes two fists and tells Thomas, "Now you see my fists? They're getting ready to (expletive) you up."

Thomas stands up and starts to run but is overtaken by the officers, who call for backup as the struggle with Thomas grows.

Cicinelli, who arrived shortly after the incident began, struck Thomas eight times in the face and head with a stun gun and stunned him repeatedly, according to prosecutors.

Both sides called medical experts to help jurors determine if Ramos and Cicinelli's conduct killed Thomas.

The coroner listed the cause of death as asphyxiation from the officers piling on his chest during the struggle.

Defense attorneys countered that Thomas suffered from a weakened heart from years of methamphetamine abuse and was a mentally unstable and violent man who had abused drugs and alcohol since 10th grade.

A forensic pathologist testified for the defense that the individual cells in Thomas' heart had changed their size and shape because of the drug abuse and that his heart cells had microscopic scarring. Thomas' heart also weighed 20 to 25 percent more than it should have for a man his age and size.

Those abnormalities could have produced an electrical arrhythmia that killed Thomas, Dr. Steven Karch told jurors Monday.

"What I saw were dead and dying heart cells," he said.

Prosecutors countered with a doctor who testified that CT scans taken at the hospital showed Thomas' heart was healthy and the normal size for a man his size and age. Blood tests measuring the acidity levels in his blood, however, indicated he had been deprived of oxygen, which caused his heart to slow dramatically, said Dr. Matthew Budoff, a cardiologist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

"There was no arrhythmia in Kelly Thomas. We know that," Budoff said.

Some of the most gripping testimony came earlier in the trial, when the defense called Thomas' mother and maternal grandfather as hostile witnesses. Both wore yellow ribbons in Thomas' honor.

His 91-year-old grandfather, Walter Dieball, approached the witness stand in a wheelchair and recalled how his grandson suddenly struck him three times with a fireplace poker in 1995 after the two argued. He said he didn't fear his grandson, however.

His mother, Cathy Thomas, fought back tears as she testified she had taken out a restraining order against her son three years ago after he choked her for several minutes during an argument. She added that she wished she had known more about schizophrenia and how to get him more help.

Ramos and Cicinelli are free on bail.

A third officer will be tried separately. The other three officers were not charged.

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The officers were found not guilty. Let this be a lesson to the rest of the population that are both homeless and mentally ill for daring to exist. This is the law's new way of 'dealing' with us.
 
inb4 the usual sheep arrive to defend these pigs.

"Baaa baaa he was resisting baaa baaaaa law and order baabaaaa dirty hobos..."
 
It's neither new nor law and order. We just see it more frequently now that cops generally wear recording equipment.
 
So now that the public is more aware shouldn't we do something about this?
 
Shall we call the cops to inform them? It's an old problem that I'm not smart enough to fix. Does the fact that firemen are way more likely to be arsonists than the general public balance out the benefits of having fire departments? How do you control them while retaining them? Does the fact that policing is likely to attract violent, abusive, and sometimes homicidal evil counterbalance the benefits of having professional police? What are the alternatives? How do you control them while retaining them?

Only insight I really have is that I think it's pretty dangerous how closely the hands of the executive branch often work and bond with the hands of the judicial branch that is supposed to control them.
 
The officers were found not guilty. Let this be a lesson to the rest of the population that are both homeless and mentally ill for daring to exist. This is the law's new way of 'dealing' with us.
So sounds like a tragic case, but I don't get from the OP what exactly you think is wrong with the law here? That the police officers involved were allowed to defend themselves in court? That the verdict was decided by an untrained jury rather than a professional judge? Seems that the problem is more with police practices than with the law.
 
It's neither new nor law and order. We just see it more frequently now that cops generally wear recording equipment.
What recording equipment would that be? They have button activated radios. But I doubt the devices record every word spoken.

The audo in this particular case was apparently caught by the microphone attached to the video camera. If someone hadn't aimed the camera at the incident we would have likely not ever heard about it.

Shall we call the cops to inform them? It's an old problem that I'm not smart enough to fix. Does the fact that firemen are way more likely to be arsonists than the general public balance out the benefits of having fire departments? How do you control them while retaining them? Does the fact that policing is likely to attract violent, abusive, and sometimes homicidal evil counterbalance the benefits of having professional police? What are the alternatives? How do you control them while retaining them?

Only insight I really have is that I think it's pretty dangerous how closely the hands of the executive branch often work and bond with the hands of the judicial branch that is supposed to control them.
It is quite simple to fix. Start treating police just like everybody else.

A person who is known to have used meth in the past, or any other similar drug, might as well have a target painted on his back.
 
It is quite simple to fix. Start treating police just like everybody else.

A person who is known to have used meth in the past, or any other similar drug, might as well have a target painted on his back.

Well treating them in a manner consistent with justice, while allowing reasonable leeway given the nature of the job, was part of my concern regarding the interplay of executive, judicial, and since I forgot to mention it, legislative powers.

I think having a "history" is more akin to being in a sinkhole than having a target. You're in the system and it gets more difficult to get out, no matter how you behave, the longer you interface with it. Now having the temerity to utter anything other than "yessah" to an officer of the law? That's the real deathwish. Comply or be terminated.

For the recording equipment, those dashcams catch an awful lot of stuff when the officer isn't allowed to have it off so long as his squad's lights are flashing.
 
I'd expect this in say Russia, not America...

Who am i kidding? American police in general seem to be awful. (At best on par with the metropolitan police over here in Britain).
 
So sounds like a tragic case, but I don't get from the OP what exactly you think is wrong with the law here? That the police officers involved were allowed to defend themselves in court? That the verdict was decided by an untrained jury rather than a professional judge? Seems that the problem is more with police practices than with the law.

Doesn't change the fact that something needs to be fixed to prevent this sort of thing from continuing to occur.
 
Does the fact that policing is likely to attract violent, abusive, and sometimes homicidal evil counterbalance the benefits of having professional police? What are the alternatives?

You could... you know.. try to make it so that these sorts of people are not attracted to those jobs.. and if they are, you could try to weed them out using psych evaluations. There is a lot that can be done! But instead I read reports that people are not being hired for the position because their IQ is too high.. which is exactly the opposite of what should be happening.

I don't even think you are fully right - but you are right that there could be a lot more done when determining who would and who wouldn't (and who shouldn't) be hired as a cop.

So I don't get it.. you point out a lot that's wrong with hiring practices of cops and you don't see the obvious solution - to change those hiring practices? Make being a police officer a job that attracts intelligent level-headed people. That's the alternative.
 
You could... you know.. try to make it so that these sorts of people are not attracted to those jobs.. and if they are, you could try to weed them out using psych evaluations. There is a lot that can be done! But instead I read reports that people are not being hired for the position because their IQ is too high.. which is exactly the opposite of what should be happening.

I don't even think you are fully right - but you are right that there could be a lot more done when determining who would and who wouldn't (and who shouldn't) be hired as a cop.

So I don't get it.. you point out a lot that's wrong with hiring practices of cops and you don't see the obvious solution - to change those hiring practices? Make being a police officer a job that attracts intelligent level-headed people. That's the alternative.

Oh, I don't think it's impossible. I just think it's very difficult. Two things: being intelligent is not proof against being a totally evil d-bag. In fact, I'm not terribly convinced that policework is necessarily better done by the most intelligent. There's probably a certain baseline, yes, but being PHD material? Not sure that's actually a valid indicator of positive community performance in this position during much of its routine duties. Level-headed? Now, that has some promise, sure. But the testing for that is spotty from what I can tell. They already screen out people with criminal convictions fairly aggressively. Do you really think it'll be terribly effective at catching people who may develop violent or abusive power tripping after being exposed regularly to situations in which they are powerful and in the presence of people behaving terribly badly? Maybe you can. Maybe some departments already do! Like I said, I'm not convinced our police are actually worse now then they've been in the past. In a lot of ways, I think they're probably better. But there is a lot more recording equipment both on police and on buildings and in the hands of citizens. I think the bad behavior gets proof positive caught more frequently. But either way, I'm not super optimistic here. Especially once you start taking budgets into consideration. Heck, and this is from somebody who routinely gets told he expects too much from cops.
 
How does this keep happening? I hope this is just an isolated incident. Wouldn't even know where to begin to look for statistics on excessive force.

Anyway,
A forensic pathologist testified for the defense that the individual cells in Thomas' heart had changed their size and shape because of the drug abuse and that his heart cells had microscopic scarring. Thomas' heart also weighed 20 to 25 percent more than it should have for a man his age and size.

Those abnormalities could have produced an electrical arrhythmia that killed Thomas, Dr. Steven Karch told jurors Monday.

"What I saw were dead and dying heart cells," he said.

Prosecutors countered with a doctor who testified that CT scans taken at the hospital showed Thomas' heart was healthy and the normal size for a man his size and age. Blood tests measuring the acidity levels in his blood, however, indicated he had been deprived of oxygen, which caused his heart to slow dramatically, said Dr. Matthew Budoff, a cardiologist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
These prosecutors aren't the most medically-inclined, are they? How the hell is a CT scan supposed to show problems solely on a cellular scale?
 
The death of the man is tragic.

I do not think that it is appropriate to post a video here that shows a man being killed, particularly when we are directed to the exact timestamp when it will occur.
 
I sure as hell am not clicking on it. What has been seen cannot be unseen. Don't necessarily think I need to watch a real homicide(legal or otherwise) unless compelled to do so as part of a jury of the law or the not optional necessities of life.
 
Oh, I don't think it's impossible. I just think it's very difficult. Two things: being intelligent is not proof against being a totally evil d-bag. In fact, I'm not terribly convinced that policework is necessarily better done by the most intelligent. There's probably a certain baseline, yes, but being PHD material? Not sure that's actually a valid indicator of positive community performance in this position during much of its routine duties.

I'd rather have a physics geek be a cop than someone who use to be a bully in highschool... as long as the geek in question is physically fit and passes all the other tests of course.

Level-headed? Now, that has some promise, sure. But the testing for that is spotty from what I can tell They already screen out people with criminal convictions fairly aggressively. Do you really think it'll be terribly effective at catching people who may develop violent or abusive power tripping after being exposed regularly to situations in which they are powerful and in the presence of people behaving terribly badly? Maybe you can.

Maybe you can, but from what I've read police departments in the U.S. don't even try... meaning that there is no psych evaluation when you apply, or anything like that.

For some reason this job seems to attract people it shouldn't be attracting - and the public suffers as a result. And nobody seems to want to do anything about it because status quo..

Maybe some departments already do! Like I said, I'm not convinced our police are actually worse now then they've been in the past. In a lot of ways, I think they're probably better. But there is a lot more recording equipment both on police and on buildings and in the hands of citizens. I think the bad behavior gets proof positive caught more frequently. But either way, I'm not super optimistic here. Especially once you start taking budgets into consideration. Heck, and this is from somebody who routinely gets told he expects too much from cops.

Maybe they aren't worse, but cops in other countries seem to be.. better. More level-headed! Less aggressive.. Not all countries, but most of the cop horror stories in the west tend to come out of the U.S.

I think it's a problem with cop culture, and such culture is not easy to change.. and I have ran into nice helpful cops in the U.S. myself, so it's not everyone.. but it seems like things could be improved quite a bit.
 
Just as a heads up I removed the video everyone. The only reason I posted it to begin with was to raise awareness of the issue at hand.
 
Wouldn't even know where to begin to look for statistics on excessive force.
That would be from the police departments themselves which typically claim these types of incidents were nothing of the sort.
 
This is not a police problem, it is a mental illness problem.

A mentally deranged homeless drug abuser with a violent past - this is the problem. Why was this man loose? He should have been committed and locked up for his own protection as well as the public's. His family all testified about his being crazy and violent and yet they did nothing to stop him. At least he did not kill anyone.
 
The death of the man is tragic.

I do not think that it is appropriate to post a video here that shows a man being killed, particularly when we are directed to the exact timestamp when it will occur.
This is what inevitably occurs if you don't have access to the video:

This is not a police problem, it is a mental illness problem.

A mentally deranged homeless drug abuser with a violent past - this is the problem. Why was this man loose? He should have been committed and locked up for his own protection as well as the public's. His family all testified about his being crazy and violent and yet they did nothing to stop him. At least he did not kill anyone.
Especially given that he was being beaten and murdered by two cops after doing nothing wrong other than not following the one cop's every whim. And this beating continued to occur even while he was apologizing profusely and claiming he couldn't breath.

This video was from a Court TV episode. I think if they consider it to be appropriate to the viewing audience to understand the basics of what occurred that it should certainly be accessible to be seen. Besides, the final sequence was obscured by a tree from the video camera. And the video ended long before the victim died.
 
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