A lot of oddly gleeful folks treat the verdict as evidence that police did the right thing the night Thomas suffered fatal injuries while being remorselessly tortured by men with badges.

That’s absurd. The frail, mentally ill homeless man wouldn’t be dead if a cop didn’t openly declare he was going to “f—” Thomas up and then follow through on his threat. If the officers had a shred of humanity, Thomas would be alive.

I’m glad to see the L.A. Times report that at least one person in Fullerton understands this:

“Fullerton’s chief of police said he would fight an appeal from one of the officers acquitted in the death of Kelly Thomas to get his job back.

“Jay Cicinelli was fired after being charged by Orange County prosecutors with involuntary manslaughter and excessive force in the 2011 death of the mentally ill homeless man.

“His co-defendant Manuel Ramos, also a former Fullerton police officer, was charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

“On Monday a Santa Ana jury found both of them not guilty of all charges.

“Dan Hughes, Fullerton chief of police, said in a statement that his decision to fire Cicinelli is separate and unaffected by the acquittal.”

“’Former Police Officer Jay Cicinelli has alleged that he was wrongfully terminated and has demanded his job back,’ Hughes said. ‘I stand behind the employment decisions I have made.'”

2011 killing produced shameful reaction from many

Why do I express satisfaction that “at least one person in Fullerton” understands what happened to Thomas was horrible?

Because of Steve Greenhut’s U-T San Diego column, which points out that many in Fullerton didn’t get this at all.

“…in July 2011, the Fullerton political establishment rushed to the defense of officers who had beaten a 130-pound homeless schizophrenic named Kelly Thomas. The public saw the published photo of Thomas’ horribly swollen and bruised face, yet the mayor went on TV saying he had seen worse injuries in the Vietnam War and that it was unclear what killed Thomas, who died in a hospital days after the whomping.

“We also learned that police officers confiscated the video camera of a bystander and were allowed to watch the surveillance video of the incident and essentially get their stories straight before giving their statements.”

This is pathetic. As Steve points out, it is also not surprising.

“This one-time idealist wants to believe that in a free society the rulers are held to the same standards as the ruled, that the public wouldn’t stand for the kind of official brutality that takes place in unfree nations and that juries would punish killers even if they wear a uniform.

“Yet over years of writing about policing issues, it’s hard to remain hopeful. No matter how egregious the incident — police gunning down a troubled teen in an empty park, shooting a fleeing suspect in the back, or planting evidence in a car trunk — there’s rarely any punishment.”

Take it away, commenters. Explain to us once again how Kelly Thomas got what he had coming.

Sheesh.

Editor’s note: This is the third part of a three-part series on how the homeless and mentally ill are treated in California. Part One was about the Kelly Thomas beating and death. Part Two was about how L.A. sheriffs deal with the homeless.

Aug. 28, 2012

By Tori Richards

The videotaped police beating death of homeless man Kelly Thomas left a lasting legacy on the Fullerton Police Department that has culminated with sweeping changes in how officers deal with the public.

The department’s dirty laundry was aired this week in a 53-page report that blasted the command staff for protocol that ranged from the appearance of falsifying reports to creating conflict of interests to encouraging a sub-par standard of doing business.

Civil rights attorney Michael Gennaco, who heads the Los Angeles police watchdog group, the Office of Independent Review, listed 59 recommendations for the Fullerton Police Department in the wake of Thomas’ death a year ago July. So far, 34 have been implemented, with several more mandates coming down soon.

The report was unveiled Aug. 21 at a Fullerton City Council meeting that was packed both with Thomas supporters and police union officials.

“My biggest priority since the Kelly Thomas murder is to ensure something like this doesn’t occur again, that we don’t have another incident similar to this,” said Councilman Bruce Whitaker. “We have to get down to the foundational level to ensure that we guard against something like this.”

Thomas, 37, was beaten in the parking lot of a bus depot when he tried to flee from a menacing interrogation from Officer Manuel Ramos. The schizophrenic homeless man had been trying to open car door handles when Ramos arrived with Officer Joe Wolfe; and the pair automatically took a hostile stance rather than engaging in a fact-finding mission.

A total of six officers eventually engaged in the beating and most of them were piled on top of Thomas. He was taken comatose to a hospital, where he died a few days later. Ramos was charged with second degree murder and another officer, Jay Cicinelli, with manslaughter for repeatedly bashing Thomas’ head with a Taser gun to the extent that he lost an eye.

Ramos, Cicinelli and Wolfe have all been fired.

“I was surprised from the beginning of the incident when I learned about it,” Gennaco told CalWatchDog.com. “My view is that this never needed to happen.”

Whitaker said he was actually surprised at the substance of the report.

“This one really captured more of the totality of some of the management shortfalls and problems in the department,” he told CalWatchDog.com. “It gives us a lot of room for thought to ensure these things are rectified.”

The Beating Seen Around the World

According to Gennaco’s report, “The tragic outcome and the manner in which is death occurred…sent shock waves of concern about the police officers’ actions throughout the nation and beyond. Photographs of the horrific injuries suffered by Mr. Thomas were published, traumatizing the public’s consciousness while contributing to the keen interest in learning how this encounter transpired.”

During his investigation, he interviewed dozens of police officers, command staff and other witnesses. He read reports, watched the beating tape and listened to the digital recording. In the end, the OIR gave a 50 page report to the chief along with three volumes of exhibits and transcripts. The purpose was to determine whether the officers violated policy and to conduct a review of department policies, procedures and training.

Gennaco wrote: “[M]ore can and should be done in reforming the way in which FPD hires and trains its officers, investigates and reviews uses of force, learns from those force incidents, holds its officers accountable and considers improvements in policy. Our recommendations are intended to spark continued reform in each of these areas to continue to move the Department forward in a positive way.”

He had sharp criticism for Ramos, saying his investigation was more akin to banter resulting in a non-productive and unprofessional discussion. At one point, Ramos asked if Thomas spoke English and any other language, sarcastically stating that his partner spoke 10 languages.

“The officers’ initial interaction with Mr. Thomas unnecessarily escalated a situation that, if handled professionally, could have been resolved without significant force,” Gennaco wrote.

When other officers arrived, they should have remembered they were investigating a non-violent offense with no evidence of a crime.

“However, the officers dealing with Mr. Thomas found a way to transform a casual encounter into an incident resulting in death,” Gennaco wrote. “Every patrol officer in America should know that there is a correlation between being homeless and the existence of mental illness. Yet in this case, the attitude adopted by [Ramos] was one of disdain and impatience that was aggravated when Mr. Thomas declined to politely and deferentially answer his questions.”

Gennaco did not dwell on the incident itself, saying that he would let a jury decide the fate of Ramos and Cicinelli. The three remaining officers who are still employed and not charged should be able to stay on the job, he stated.

The Investigation

Much of Gennaco’s criticism was levied at how the department conducted the investigation.

After the incident, the officers were brought to the station and allowed to watch the video in groups and then told to write their reports.

“A view-first policy could create the impression among some that the Department is attempting to clean up its reports so they appear consistent with each other and the video evidence that is present… Creating an exception for police personnel is inconsistent with long-accepted investigative practices,” Gennaco wrote.

One supervisor, in reading a report, changed a numerical range regarding the amount of force to the word “multiple.”

“It should be the goal of any reviewing supervisor to obtain more detail, not less,” he wrote.

Chief Michael Sellers — who has since retired on medical leave — chose not to respond to the station that night when informed of what happened. He then went on vacation. The next day, the department did not issue any statements expressing its concern.

“Rather, the Department seemed to hunker down as the information about the incident became known through other sources and dribbled out information about the event in a rather haphazard way,” Gennaco wrote. “In our view, the Chief of Police needed to address the incident head on and almost immediately.”

Sellers should have gone before the media to express the department’s concern, express regret without assigning blame and communicate apologies to the family. Instead, comments were given by the Public Information Officer, who is a member of the police union that protects the officers.

Another misfortune was that the department began its investigation rather than turning the matter over to the District Attorney’s Office, which handles officer-related deaths. The department needs to have some sort of policy regarding what to do in cases like this, Gennaco wrote.

Gennaco’s Disclosures 

One thing that the OIR found troubling was the department’s complacency. 

The OIR did not find evidence where supervisors and officers conspired to prevent misconduct from coming to light. Rather, the department had a “culture of complacency,” where commanders didn’t have the mechanisms to detect misconduct and didn’t properly address it when it happened.

One comment that was attributed to department leaders was that every organization needed “C players,” and they didn’t put a high premium on quality policing. Also, several leaders were not on speaking terms with each other, and many were in competition for the next chief’s job. One officer remarked that a particular supervisor would “give a goat a good evaluation.”

Despite the many criticisms, Thomas’ father Ron Thomas thinks that the department got an easy pass and more should have been done to the other officers on the scene.

“He seems to be protecting the police quite a bit,” Ron Thomas said of the Gennaco report. “He gave recommendations, but to not find that [Officer Kenton] Hampton should be terminated in of itself. He arrived when Cicinelli did and he had every opportunity to stop that and didn’t do it. He allowed great bodily harm to occur to Kelly. Because his brother in blue was doing it, he allowed it.”

Moving Forward

Sellers is now collecting approximately $300,000 a year in benefits. His interim successor, Kevin Hamilton, is gone too. An administration captain was demoted to lieutenant. And the department has made a lot of changes.

Before the Thomas beating, the department had provided crisis intervention training geared toward the mentally ill homeless to 14 of its patrol officers. Now all of the officers have been trained. And where before one full time homeless intervention officer was employed, it is now two, and the pair work around the clock.

On Friday, the new interim chief released a set of updated policy changes specifically requested in the Gennaco report:

* Major incidents will be recorded; reports will be written before the end of the shift;

* Supervisors shall not make any edits that make the reports less concise;

* Officers should consider using alternatives to force when warranted;

* When one officer sees another using force, it shall be reported to a supervisor;

* The Taser shouldn’t be used to strike someone and officers should stop using it after three tries.

During Gennaco’s interviews, he found many officers who were distressed over what happened and took pride in doing a good job. As a whole, the group was cooperative, while the chief was described as “distant to say the least.”

The report summed it up this way: “[T]he FPD that existed on July 5, 2011 is not the FPD of more than a year later — changed leadership, introspection, and reform have placed the Department in an upward trajectory.”

Editor’s note: Today marks a year since Kelly Thomas, an unarmed homeless man, was severely beaten by Fullerton police. He died five days later. This is the first of a three-part series.

July 5, 2012

By Tori Richards

An outside investigation into whether police officers violated policy leading up to the beating death of homeless man Kelly Thomas will be completed shortly. If consistent with preliminary findings, the investigation will lambast the Fullerton Police Department for a series of blunders.

A CalWatchDog.com investigation has found that, not only have the officers’ actions violated the city’s police policy manual, they are in sharp contrast to another police agency that encounters the homeless at a rate hundreds of percentage points higher, but without a record of violence.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — a model agency in its dealings with the homeless — has more than 2,000 encounters a month and runs a groundbreaking program that seeks to aid that sector, rather than incarcerate them.

“The International Association of Chiefs of Police gave its highest award to the LASD in 1996 because we partnered law enforcement with mental health and social workers to work together and identify people living on the streets and provide opportunities to them,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker.

That was 16 years ago and LASD is still going strong. Numerous police agencies have followed their lead and initiated their own polices, including Fullerton.

But on July 5, 2011, none of that seemed to matter when Thomas had a fatal run-in with six police officers at a Fullerton bus depot. The 37-year-old man was a schizophrenic who preferred living on the streets to a structured life indoors where he took his medicine.

He was a non-violent person who loved to read, had a great sense of humor with those who knew him and had a quiet and reserved personality for those who didn’t.

On that night a witness saw him trying the door handles of several cars and called police to report the suspicious activity. First on the scene was Officer Manuel Ramos, who could be heard on a police surveillance tape talking about how he had encountered Thomas in the past. Thomas was given a series of commands that he attempted to follow, none of it seeming to appease Ramos, who became increasingly aggressive.

Ramos then asked to look through a backpack that Thomas was carrying and was given permission. Fellow officer Joe Wolfe arrived on the scene and searched the backpack, locating mail addressed to another individual. The two officers conferred and then Ramos donned a pair of black latex gloves, telling Thomas he was going to “F— you up.”

This prompted Thomas to try to escape. But he was tackled by Wolfe, who gave him a baton blow to the leg so severe that the “whack” sound could be clearly heard on digital recorders the officers were wearing. A beating ensued that was magnified when four additional officers arrived and piled onto Thomas so hard that he later died due to lack of oxygen.

All the while, Thomas pleaded for help, repeatedly apologized and cried out in pain.

Murder charge

Ramos was charged with second degree murder. Another officer, Jay Cicinelli, was charged with manslaughter for repeatedly bashing Thomas’ head with a Taser gun to the extent that he lost an eye.

A video and audio tape of the gruesome attack was played in court before a judge, who ordered the pair to stand trial.

Much like LAPD with the Rodney King beating in 1992, Police Chief Michael Sellers did little to respond to public outcry after the incident made national news. And also like the LAPD’s Chief Daryl Gates, Sellers’ actions later cost him his job. Three city council members who participated in a cover-up and defended the officers were recalled in June by voters.

The city hired Los Angeles County’s Office of Independent Review to look at the actions of the officers to see whether they violated police policy. OIR was formed as an impartial investigative agency formed in the wake of LAPD’s Rampart Scandal, where officers falsified reports and engaged in rogue shootings.

Michael Gennaco, OIR’s lead attorney, told CalWatchDog.com that his report should be released within the next week and would be public. A preliminary six-page report was released in February that criticized the police department in two areas.

The first was the release of an unflattering Thomas booking photo from a 2009 trespassing arrest. Gennaco took issue with the fact that the photo — showing a disheveled Thomas — was released at all because the deceased Thomas was a victim rather than a suspect. The photo could have been released “to portray Mr. Thomas in a negative light,” Gennaco wrote.

Secondly, Fullerton PD told the media that two of its officers had suffered “possible broken bones” during the beating when it was later deemed that no such injuries existed.

“The correction caused some members of the public to question the veracity of the Department and created a belief by some that the Department intentionally tried to fabricate or exaggerate the officers’ injuries in an effort to create sympathy for them,” Gennaco wrote.

This over-exaggeration of officers’ injuries was consistent with their actions at the scene when a paramedic arrived and was directed to treat several officers with minor scrapes instead of tending to a mortally wounded Thomas crumpled in a heap nearby.

The Fullerton Police Department Policy Manual

Section 464 of the manual, titled “Homeless Persons,” is a 2-1/2 page edict meant to “ensure that personnel understand the needs and rights of the homeless and to establish procedures to guide officers during all contacts with the homeless.”

The tone of the manual is written in a manner to aid the homeless rather than treat them as suspects.

Specifically:

“Officers are encouraged to contact the homeless for purposes of rendering aid, support and for community-oriented policing purposes. Nothing in this policy is meant to dissuade an officer from taking reasonable enforcement action when facts support a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. 

“However, when encountering a homeless person who has committed a non-violent misdemeanor and continued freedom is not likely to result in a continuation of the offense or breach of the peace, officers are encouraged to consider long-term solutions to problems that may relate to the homeless, such as shelter referrals and counseling in lieu of physical arrest.”

In Thomas’s case, he was not involved in any type of violent offense, so he would fall under the above mandate to be referred to a shelter rather than beaten up and killed, said attorney Brian Gurwitz, a former prosecutor.

“Trying to open car doors could be auto tampering, which is a misdemeanor,” said Gurwitz, who has been retained by Thomas’s mother. “The papers he had appeared to be junk. Under no circumstances would it be violent, even possibility of stolen property would be non-violent. No DA would ever file this as a felony.”

It turns out that the mail Thomas was carrying that apparently escalated the events was later found to be discarded in the trash by its owner. But Ramos and his colleagues did not take the time to determine this before the beating began.

“He liked to read,” said Thomas’ father, Ron. “He had a Bible with him that he always read. The letters he found, they were just something else for him to read.”

Another mandate of section 464 calls for the appointment of a homeless liaison officer. The department has employed Cpl. John “J.D.” DeCaprio in this position for several years and he has built relationships with many in the homeless community, including Thomas.

DeCaprio has even been known to spend his own money to buy toiletries and clothes for many of the people he encounters on the streets, said Fullerton police spokesperson Jeff Stuart.

Unfortunately for Kelly Thomas, the city only has one such officer assigned to this duty and J.D. wasn’t working the night of July 5.

“DeCaprio said he never had to put cuffs on [Kelly] and that he always did everything that DeCaprio wanted him to,” Ron Thomas said. “They had a good relationship. DeCaprio did tell me that if he was on duty that night, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Section 464 is summed up with this passage under the subhead of “Other Considerations”:

“Homeless members of the community will receive the same level and quality of service provided to other members of the community. The fact that a victim or witness is homeless can, however, require special considerations for a successful investigation and prosecution.”

A Sharp Contrast: the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Back in 1995, the homeless population was a huge problem in Los Angeles. They blocked businesses, aggressively panhandled and created an environmental hazard. Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker was then a sergeant at the West Hollywood station and had a real empathy for that segment of the population.

The city of West Hollywood got a matching funds federal grant and started a community policing program as a way to offer help. The Sheriff’s Department surveyed the public to find out issues of concern. Then it partnered with a local shelter to locate, identify and assist homeless who were willing to accept help.

“Those who were creating the nuisances were a small percentage causing the majority of the complaints,” Parker said. “It’s very expensive to incarcerate them as opposed to sending them to a homeless shelter. None of us enjoyed taking people to jail for panhandling. What we’re trying to do is focus on the root of the problem.”

Working in teams with mental health professionals and social workers, the deputies were so successful that the program soon became a pet project of Chief Lee Baca, who would later become sheriff. He expanded it countywide and also focused on rehabilitation efforts if a homeless person was incarcerated.

“The first two minutes after they walk out [of jail] are the most important ones; it decides which way they are going to go,” Parker said. “We have arrangements with veteran and volunteer organizations to pick up inmates willing to change their lives and take them to shelters so they can work on getting back into society.”

In 2000, Baca initiated a program to cut through the bureaucracy to help the homeless obtain Social Security cards and identification cards so they would be able to work.

“Sheriff Baca has taken a lead on this; he wants to address this situation so that it doesn’t involve incarceration,” Parker said.

COMING ON MONDAY: The mentally ill homeless: A problem the state of California has absconded and left not to medical personnel but to local law enforcement.