a homeless schizophrenic named Kelly Thompson was murdered by local police for no justifiable reason other than they were power-hungry dogs. Below is the video link; I warn you now, those who are faint of heart should not watch the video, nor should this be watched near children.

http://fullertonstories.com/video-details-surprise-many-at-thomas-trial-preliminary-hearing/

there needs to be justice. Out of the 6+ men who assaulted him, only 2 were dealt with. They even tried to bribe the man's dad to walk away.

I was thinking some sort of petition to get those policemen fired, but that idea isn't set in stone yet.

Lovely how you totally demonized them.
FOR NOW, only two are being punished, but theyre being charge with 2nd degree murder & something else. A petition wont do jack, the only thing that would even have a chance of working is going to the city council or whatever with a bunch of support, or something along those lines. Not everything is solved by petitions, its a piece of paper. Of course people are going to be upset about this, but do you really expect the police dept to go, "well, im sure we will be fine even with losing 6 people on the force." No, thats stupid as hell.

i dont like cops the try to run the world but on tried to arrest me for loitoring on a freaking walmart parking lot while it was open and i threw soda on him and my dad got him fired

Nice to see youre a shining example of what this group has to offer

>>3
I don't care what they did to you. You don't throw pop on a cop. That alone, no matter why they came towards you (UNLESS BLATANT ABUSE) can get you arrested. That is still assaulting an officer.

>>3 ....that's not something you should ever brag about or repeat

>>2 normally I try and keep bias out of anything I say when it comes to the news, but these men of the law are supposed to be role models for those around them. There is no honor in beating up a mentally ill man. I realize a petition won't do anything, that's exactly why I said the idea was considered, not chosen.

Furthermore, the police force tried to bribe the victim's father to simply leave the area (which would have dropped all charges). Not only did the policemen know they did something wrong, but they tried to sweep the dust under the doormat instead of admitting they did wrong and accepting punishment.

>>3 and may I stress again, unless policemen are beating you into the dirt, do not assault them.

yfw there's already a petition to get them fired.

http://www.change.org/petitions/remove-all-6-fullerton-police-officers-involved-in-the-murder-of-kelly-thomas

I don't know why nobody noticed that as soon as the individual was batonned he tried to strike at both police officers. I don't know why nobody noticed that when they told him to put his hands behind his back so they could cuff him, he continued to resist and keep his hands under his stomach. I don't understand how people expect the officers to know the man is mentally when they have to deal with violent criminals who also act that way to try to get out of being arrested.

An officer is not going to take chances with a criminal, no matter what. Doing so can cost them their lives. From the looks of it, the man underwent an anxiety attack and it played a major role in his death. This is not the fault of the officers, and the anti-establishment bullshit I'm hearing really pisses me off.

GreyCode, I am extremely disappointed in your rhetoric. And gen kida, you are a fucking moron.

>>8 More people are pissed that, if I remember correctly, they literally put pressure on his chest making it so he couldnt breath as a way "calm him down", or some such nonsense. He died because the cops used overly brutal measures, not because he was a schizo homeless man.
N yes, gen is.

>>9 but no, nobody noticed, theyre to focused on the victim being a victim, and that cops are supposedly evil heartless "power-hungry dogs."

I'm loving how both sides of the coin are being insulted instead of considered. You all can think what you want, I presented an incident that happened and brought it up for discussion, but the focus is on a man's death. Can we just think past the "the police did this" or "the victim was a _______"? regardless of our opinions the matter still stands, because guess what? no matter who wins this argument, nothing will be justified and Kelly Thompson will not come back to life.

all I'm saying is, there were more than two officers involved, so they all should receive some form of restitution for their actions. not once did I say all authority is corrupt and down with politics, not once did I say that Mr. Thompson didn't try and fight back or free himself. I'm saying a man died. Now let's all calm down and debate this peacefully like the role models we're supposed to be for others.

Hate to break it to you, but the original instigator of "the police did this" was you. "was murdered by local police for no justifiable reason other than they were power-hungry dogs."

First of all, this is manslaughter at best. Only one officer is being charged with second-degree murder (which is a stretch because there was no intent, so it's likely to be dropped to involuntary manslaughter). Only one other officer is being charged with involuntary manslaughter. These would be the two officers who were likely sitting on top of the man to subdue him.

Second, the other officers were not charged because their only part in this was assisting the two charged. They broke no laws nor took any action that would warrant their dismissal. Yes, one officer battonned the man, but they have every right to as officers of the law, since the man was resisting arrest.

And I want to argue the "suffocation" point. Loss of oxygen will not kill you right away. You would need to be without oxygen for several minutes before brain damage would even set in. You'd be rendered unconscious far before that. Were that to happen, the officers would promptly pull themselves off of him, call a Medivac, and transport him to the nearest hospital (which they did, according to procedure).

What will kill someone, however, is excessive strain on a heart brought on by irregular heartbeat. Hence why I presented the anxiety attack hypothesis. If a person's anxiety is high enough, they will have to be sedated or their body will pretty much destroy itself. It seems more likely that the man suffered a heart attack or DVT than dying of suffocation, especially when you consider the man lost blood at the scene, adding further straight to the heart.

Wheres the damn "the more you know" rainbow when we really need it.

as long as something's being done I won't complain further.
But I do feel the need to state (>>12) that when I started this thread, my pointing fingers at police was parroted from a news source, the same with the link I provided. As for suffocation, from what reports say, his windpipe was crushed. He could still breathe, but not take in very much oxygen, so it's very likely a medical procedure killed him. He also was bleeding profusely, but I doubt that was his cause of death.

as for >>13, one thing....
1) please don't insult my intelligence, it may not occur to you that I think differently than you, a little tolerance goes a long way. I voiced my opinion, that's all.

The heck are you talking about. I was refeering to mk's little tid bit about suffocation n lack of oxygen, etc etc.

i go with you GreyCode this just mean the same thing happend to one of my family member he was beat by a policeman for no apparent reason

Unless of course >>16 you are just ignorant/oblivious to what actually happened

>>17 or maybe they just want to see some sort of restitution for what another policeman did? It's really easy to create a bias towards someone after they do something to hurt you.

>>16 and I'm sorry that something happened to one of your family members

So stupid. they act like little kids. what happened to us asking for " please"? and just because he didnt obey, doesnt give you sense just to hurt them -__-

>>18 Unless by "no apparent reason" they mean that their family member was doing wrong, in which case, they deserved it.

Am I the only one who thinks, that this man simply can't put his hands on the back?? And then police was like "We don't give a fuck with details - you're refusing to put your hands on a back so we can beat you and arrest you "
PS sorry for my english...

/that is terrible i think police these days abuse their power too much and think they can do whatever they want . There needs to be justice and we dollars should bring it to people like these.

>>22 Or you could read the thread, and realize that the police were just doing their job.

It's dumb to think that just because they have authority they are good people. Let this be a reminder to judge people by their character and not their social or political rank. However, it is equally ignorant of us to assume Kelly Thompson is innocent, given the possibility of something occurring beyond the view of the camera.

Sometimes I wonder why news exists other than to create the soap opera effect where everyone chooses their side and turns a blind eye to the possibilities, while at the same time only viewing potentially shopped pieces of the legitimate incident.

>>24 Money. That's the only thing the w"news" companies care about. It's just a race to see which news crew can twist something into a half-truth to make the most shocking story so that they get ratings. That's why I like to stick to local news channels.

wow i herd this too, the cops can't keep getting away with this its wrong.

>>26 You didn't read the thread at all, did you?

>>24 I agree with you when it comes to looking at both sides of the story. You can clearly see Kelly resisting at a few points in the video, especially at the beginning. The cops, however, should have at least moved off of his chest when he started to scream that he couldn't breathed. Faking or not(in this case not), that should treated seriously. The baton beating to his head was completely unnecessary; there were 3-4 cops holding him down. Even when Kelly lost consciousness, the cops tried to communicate with him while still crushing him. There's a fine line between restrain and abuse, and these guys crossed it the second they didn't moved after Kelly "went to sleep."

every day!!! onk onk!!!

>>29

How about you drop being a moron, and actually contribute to the conversation, idiot?

>>29 Please do not post stupid shit.

Wow. Just wow. I can't find words how moronic and disgusting these two shitholes are to me. Just because they're cops doesn't mean they can beat a guy until he's lying half-dead in a pool of blood. He was cooperating perfectly and even a jackass as stupid as them could've seen that!
>>29 What they said, dumbass.

A lot of these police brutality cases could be avoided if criminals would stop resisting arrest.

If these criminals are fighting officers, it's most likely because they know they're going to spend a lot of time in jail and they'd rather take their chances.

I don't like that people are dying at the hands of the police. I don't think anybody is. Especially not the officers responsible.

Just have an open mind when reviewing cases like this. They aren't exactly dealing with the most tranquil people.

If we continue to discourage police officers, they'll be too concerned about their own lives/status and less willing to enforce the law. Honest, law-abiding citizens will be less safe while criminals will have less to worry about.

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

However I look at it, I don't think that it's an officer's job to beat the shit out of a half-naked homeless guy with a backpack with 5 others just because he couldn't give them his name or put his hands behind his back. You also don't need to suffocate an unarmed man to do that, nor do you need to baton the shit out of him, NOR DO YOU NEED TO TAZE HIM, while he is SCREAMING FOR HELP, APOLOGIZING AND SCREAMING FOR HIS DAD.
Policemen are trained to disarm a man and cuff him _alone_. It's a simple technique to restrain a man by putting his hands behind his back. You don't need 2, neither 5 other people for that. Maybe one. Without the "we'll beat the shit out of you, macho bullshit". Police officers are not there to judge you, they are there to protect law abiding citizens against the ones that don't. That doesn't necessarily include this amount of violence. The emphasis is on restraining a non-law abiding citizen. Punishment is the jury's job, not the police's, don't get it mixed up. I mean the man was UNARMED. Not everyone is a death threat, especially not a man like this against 2 and later 6 other officers. I mean how fucking ignorant can you guys get??
This is not police doing their jobs, animals do better jobs restraining a man, and hurt him less.

I try to cut back on personal insults, so I'm sorry if this might sound disappointing, but to some of you guys, and you know who I mean: Shame on you! Fucking SHAME ON YOU, go crawl back inside of your brutality-justifying, brainwashed, smart-ass, insensitive, hypocritic holes where you crawled out of you spineless bunch of retards.

>>35
Implying a cop can just restrain anyone, alone, is at the least making you out to be retarded. When my dad was a cop, it took 15 officers to get a guy on the ground and even then they had a rough time. You don't take chances, not in this age when almost any criminal can get a gun, or are so drugged up that they are almost super human in both strength and being able to take a beating and not feel it.

They could have done a better job, sure, but don't start claiming how EASY it is to restrain a person when you obviously don't know shit about what a single man can do to a group of people.

>>36 "Implying a cop can just restrain anyone, alone, is at the least making you out to be retarded." I'm implying that it's his job to able to restrain an unarmed miserable skinny dude without killing him. If that's making me out to be retarded, than I'd rather be that then whatever the fuck you are. "When my dad was a cop, it took 15 officers to get a guy on the ground and even then they had a rough time." And even you should know that that's uncommon. But I'm sure that guy was a skinny shirtless homeless guy with a backpack too. By the way aren't you somewhat biased since your dad was a cop? I mean, you're using an extreme situation as an argument. This is ridiculus.
"You don't take chances, not in this age when almost any criminal can get a gun..." You don't, but cops were trained to be able to asses those chances, that is their job. One doesn't get to be a cop to kill or treat every and anyone he deems even slightly dangerous as a potential serial murderer.
They dude wasn't hulk you know, he was an unarmed skinny bum, he wasn't even threatening anyone. I mean for fucks sake, how much does it take to understand this. Even a moron could've seen that. It's not rocket science you know?
"...or are so drugged up that they are almost super human in both strength and being able to take a beating and not feel it" I'm sorry for getting personal again, but you watch too many blockbusters. There's some sick shit out there, but the stuff you're talking about is not so common. And even if what you say is right, they didn't take chances. 4 guys immediately came for support. That isn't the problem. The problem is they didn't have enough cerebral sufficience to be able to tell that backup isn't needed. "Ask first, then shoot" not the other way around, if you get my analogy, before you misunderstand what I'm implying. What you imply is like a tail wagging it's dog. It's the other way around. There's nothing to justify shit like this. Only immense amount of human ignorance and foolishness. And if you don't get it, just please, try to write something at least marginally intelligent as your argument instead of fallacies.

They SHOULD have done a better job, it wasn't optional for them to do a better job. Also, I DO know what a group of people can do to a single man, so don't you go around being a smartass, cause I won't feel sorry for 6 armed officers beating and tazing an unarmed skinny dude on the street to death. It may not be easy to restrain a body builder, but that guy sure as hell wasn't one. So don't turn my words around, and keep crawling back inside that hole I mentioned earlier, cause this spineless police violence justifying is making me puke.

>>37

actually, I don't think >>36 's opinion is biased at all, but I do think he or she is more informed on the matter than anybody who's ever said "Fuck the police."

criminals treat officers like shit. that's how the whole fued got started.

being a police officer is an honorable job and a risky one, and still, they are looked down upon when they have to go to certain lengths to deal with people who are just outrageous and out of control.

I don't understand how criminals earned the sympathy of the entire country.

I don't even read any of these articles or listen to any of these stories on the news anymore because it's so ridiculous how against the police everyone seems to be.


I wish there was some sort of simulator to see how your average citizen would react in the same situations.

I understand that they're trained, but you have to consider adrenaline and human instincts. when they're in awful situations.

>>38 >I don't understand how criminals earned the sympathy of the entire country.

No one deserves to die like that. You say something aggressive to the police, you don't want to be arrested, you put up a fight in fear of your life being ended when you go to jail, and you die. It's not a fair chain of events for anyone, and it should be avoided. Giving up and saying 'humans are fearful and instinctual' seems like a cop out to me.

They get support because people are afraid of the police. If they can just kill people without consequence and without wholly explained and agreed reasoning, why are they police officers? Not everyone can do the job, clearly, but if you give into fear like these guys did you shouldn't be a police officer.

It's not as if all criminals are gaining support. A guy waves a gun around and starts shooting, people aren't going to go against the cops when they kill him. But, a small, unarmed person starting to act very erratically and dangerously is shot, strangled, etc, then people get supportive. At least, that is how I think, others may be different.

In almost all those cases, the police officer is not charged with wrongdoing even if they made the wrong choice. I could be reasoned to understand that cops aren't perfect, but only if they received some sort of punishment for killing someone when they didn't have to. The few times a police officer gets reprimanded, the police officer in question is filmed in the act (I posted something like this here a while ago). Then, the department gets all apologetic, "We don't stand for this!", etc. However, if there are only witnesses? Deny, deny, deny. I'm tired of that bullshit tactic when we are supposed to trust these people with our lives. That is the main reason I tend to suspect wrongdoing on the cops part.

>I wish there was some sort of simulator to see how your average citizen would react in the same situations.
>you have to consider adrenaline and human instincts

This is not valid criticism. If this was true, you could never criticize a website again if you can't build one from scratch, or you could never criticize your meal again at a restaurant if you couldn't make the whole thing. Another example, the President. Could you be the President? Could you make all those decisions for everyone? Surely, everyone in his position would have started a war that last years and cost trillions, because that decision was not well thought out. This does not mean that no one can criticize that or expect better, or even demand consequences. It does mean they should keep their inexperience in mind, but it does not bar all citizens from expressing their opinion.

In the real world, this is how it goes. If I allow a hacker to gain access to my company's servers and let them store illegal software on it, resulting in a loss of money for the company, they will fire me. They have no idea what happened, or how, and they have no idea how to prevent. In IT, you have to support the entire company's computer systems. No one other than you could do it, and it is an extremely stressful job, and yet you are still solely to blame when anything goes wrong. This is similar in many, many other jobs, but this does not seem to be the case with police officers. They seem to be shielded from most professional punishment. This is important, even if this is not the case, this is the public view thusfar. How can one blame them? Story after story of a cop killing an unarmed person, and getting no punishment. It doesn't look very good from the outside.

You are correct that most people don't understand how difficult it is to be a cop. It is dangerous and they do not get recognized often enough for their efforts. Most people also think police officers are trash and they don't treat them with respect, much less like strangers they know nothing about. They treat them like an un-liked parent or something similar. Additionally, most of the stories that hit the news are not of cops doing a good job, they are of cops doing a horrendous job. However, this does not mean we can't expect our police force to not be as fearful as an average citizen. Of course average people wouldn't do well, that's why they aren't police officers. Seems to me that we can avoid these kinds of deaths without radically changing the way people think, and instead by changing the way we train and arm our officers.

>>41
I can only wholeheartedly agree. Thanks for sparing me from writing another wall of text.

>>40
I agree with you somewhat, however with recent upbringings of police-shootings it's also reasonable.
Not all police-men are bad, but that doesn't mean there aren't ones that are corrupted as well.

^

Bump

>>41

Maybe you're right about these particular officers abusing their power. As I said, I haven't seen any of the footage or read any of the articles, so I don't know the details. So I agree with you when you say that they should receive some sort of penalty when death or injury could have been avoided. Let me make it clear that I said before "I don't like that people are dying at the hands of the police."
You made it seem like I'm okay with this whole mess. I was just sharing my opinion, that is: I think a lot of this could be avoided if criminals would fight their case in court instead of physically with officers. Maybe I did not make that clear.


==(I took some time to research some cases:)======

I just now saw the before-and-after photos of the homeless man. I think it's silly that the media would show a photo of him clean and well-dressed before he was homeless and compare it to the one taken after the beating, but whatever. He was beaten really badly and this is a case where I would most definitely agree with you. I can't imagine this man doing anything to deserve a beating like that. I think there would be more information on this case if the police didn't have something to hide.

The officers were basically only demoted as punishment. That's ridiculous.

Also just looked into the Darren Wilson case. Apparently he contradicts himself a number of times in his interview(s).
The way I see it, he was scared (maybe not for his life, but SCARED) and acted hastily. That does not make it okay to shoot at an unarmed man 12 fucking times. I don't think that a trained police officer would/should react that way unless there was an ulterior motive, but he seems like a decently educated man trying to cover up his mistakes.
He should definitely face some serious punishment, though I'm not convinced that he is a racist murderer.

==================================================


So we do have a problem with police brutality, and I never denied this, right? But it is undeniably true that there is a problem with police resistance.

You give the alleged criminals credit for acting desperately because they are scared, but it's not okay for a police officer to be human sometimes?
Can you deny that someone reaching into a car for their wallet can be mistaken for someone reaching under the seat for a pistol? If it was your life on the line, would you take the chance? (This was a recent case) (and I don't know what happened finally. At a lesser scale, I think it was just a mistake, and the officer deserves a slap on the wrist. But someone is dead, so it is obviously more serious than that. I'm glad I'm not in charge of this.)

>They seem to be shielded from most professional punishment. This is important, even if this is not the case, this is the public view thusfar.

You're right about this, but a lot of the prosecutors in these cases (when they do have a trial) seem to throw them. And instead of the defendant getting heat, law enforcement as a whole gets it. So maybe all this anger and hatred should be redirected.

There would be more trials if there were more people alive if there was less resistance and if there was less abuse.
Basically everything's fucked. Law enforcement shouldn't be the only target.

There were so many things that had to be to address. I may have ignored something important to you. Lmk.

man...I saw one video that showed a guy getting arrested right in front of his child because he was picking her up from DAYCARE! and the man was arrested for no good reason.

>>46
"I think a lot of this could be avoided if criminals would fight their case in court instead of physically with officers." I've got a couple of problems with this one. First off, if they haven't commited a crime, technically they are not criminals. That is something the police should also be aware of, I think a lot of this could be avoided if the police would keep in mind that as long as they don't have proof or at least a very strong suspicion of someone being a criminal, they shouldn't be handled as a death threat. Even if one is a criminal, in most cases their crimes are not punishable by death, neither are they a direct death threat to a police officer. I see too many incidents where police oversteps the fine line of being able to evaluate a suspect's risk and automatically assume the worst. And not surprisingly in many cases it's downright paranoid. A suspect is still a human being and there is a varying chance of him/her being innocent after all, he only becomes a criminal after proof is provided, thus he/she deserves to be treated as such, a suspect.
On another note, if they truly are criminals, what do you expect? That a petty thief or a thug after a robbery will just freeze and say "Oh, marshal Wayne! Long time no see! Wait, let me just put this sack of down, and let's talk this through in front of a nice cup of hot coffee, shall we :)" Nope. They will run, because the system is designed to penaltize someone _After_ getting cought. So they do their best not to get cought. So what am I getting at here? That not everyone that starts running away deserves to be brutalized, beaten down, shot in the back. Because not everyone is an immediate threat to others' or the officers' lives, nor may they have committed a crime which would be punishable by being brutalized. You can't assume that anyone who has a small blackish right angle object is armed, assumptions have to be made upon richer context. That's something I don't see every officer do, although they should be trained and capable of doing it as well as being able to disarm a suspect or the criminal most of these cases without killing them. I agree that this can't always be done, but there are way too many cases when these alleged mistakes cause the death of people who aren't eligable for that type of punishment, and no eyes are batted. Depending on what kind of criminal we're speaking of, criminals have rights too.

---On a personal note---
There are also the cases when criminals who should be jailed long time ago continuously beat court cases. I think that somewhere down the line winning a court case became a question of wealth instead of proof. The richer you are the better lawyers you can get who can interpret the rules the way it serves your interests. The most notorious criminals make a lot of money, and this system serves their interests well. On the ohter end the petty criminals (who are mostly motivated out of scarcity) and the suspects (truly innocent) have no choice to defend their innocence/reduce their sentence to an appropriate punishment, since balancing a court case became a monetary asset.

Also I think that it's to be expected that a criminal will try to avoid being cought if the system will punish him for getting cought doing a crime instead of the fact of doing a crime. More so, I would emphasize prevention of being able to commit a crime in the first place, even though I am well aware that this idea could rarely be implemented because of the exploitabilities of the monetary system we live in.

All in all what I'm saying is, you can't expect a suspect/criminal not to show resistance if it serves his best interests in this kind of justice system. But the police are already expected to be able to do risk assessment without any outer help. That is a responsibility they are obligated to bear, even if people slip over it. That's one of the reasons why we put them in that role in the first place, since they are allegedly more specialized in this area than the average citizen. (And here you can say that we use police to take down criminals forcefully too, and yes that's a reason too, but not the only one. Killing a criminal is a worst case scenario, not a job goal)
---On a personal note END---

For the most part I can agree with the rest, but here are some more points where I would apply what I've written above:
"Can you deny that someone reaching into a car for their wallet can be mistaken for someone reaching under the seat for a pistol?" - I couldn't deny it, but it is a police officer's job to be able to make a good guess at what's going to happen, and if he's not sure what the suspect is reaching for, he has to assume that non-lethal force would be the best course of action, even if he puts his life on the line. That's why he gets paid for fuck's sake. But I agree on it, that individuals shouldn't be judged by what others do in the police force, some are kind and gentle people and others just want to watch the world burn. But in most cases they are judged as a whole, since you don't know them personally and since you judge police as how effectively they work as a system. And no matter how many flaws that system has, as long as they are significant flaws, they make a clear statement that the system is not working appropriately as a whole.

--On another personal note---
My oppinion is that if we should be trusting police officers, people shouldn't be given the freedom of carrying a gun. You could use it at a shooting range or at home if you'd like, but no right to carry it on streets nor in any public spaces. Anyone armed with a gun could be arrested. Since it technically should only be used for self defence in public places, it's obsolete, since that's what the cops are for technically. That would in turn give the freedom for officers to not be paranoid when someone reaches for an object. I think the benifits would be obvious.

Now the real skin of america is starting to show.