Listener “Wooden Heart”
‘cause we are all made out of shipwrecks’
alittlebitofeverythingglorious:
On July 5th, 2011, Kelly Thomas, a mentally ill homeless man was beaten into a coma by Fullerton City Police. Five days after the beating, he was pronounced dead. This video of the atrocious scene was released just recently. I am beyond disgusted.
The city surveillance video that shows a group of Fullerton police officers beating a homeless mentally ill man to death last year was finally released today, laying to rest any argument that Kelly Thomas was a threat to officers.
The shocking video, which was combined with an audio recorder worn by one of the police officers on the night of July 5, 2011, was shown in court today, then later released to the media.
“Now you see my fists?” Fullerton police officer Manny Ramos asked Thomas while slipping on a pair of latex gloves.
“Yeah, what about them?” Thomas responded.
“They are getting ready to fuck you up,” said Ramos, a burly cop who appears to outweigh Thomas by 100 pounds.
“Well, start punching,” Thomas responds, never once displaying any physical aggression towards Ramos.
Moments later, as Thomas is standing while Ramos is ordering him to get on his “fucking knees,” Fullerton cop Joseph Wolfe, who is not charged in the case, walks up and starts beating his legs with a baton.
Then Ramos gets into the act and Thomas takes off running, moving out of the frame of the camera.
The cops keep telling him to put his hands behind his back and lay on his stomach, but they are both laying on top of him, making it impossible to even breathe, much less move.
The camera, operated by a dispatcher at the station, then moves toward the beating, showing Ramos and Fullerton cop Jay Cicinelli on top of Thomas as Thomas repeatedly apologizes and telling them he is unable to breathe.
As the video continues, one of the cops can be seen kneeing him.
“Please, I can’t breathe,” Thomas pleads as the officers keep telling him to put his hands behind his “fucking back.”
The cops keep telling him to “relax” to which he responds, “I can’t, dude.”
More cops eventually arrive and a little more than four minutes into the video, they start tasing him.
And a little after five minutes into the video, as three cops are piled on top of him, beating him, tasing him, one cop looks up at another cop who just arrived on the scene and says, “help us.”
At one point he yells out, “Dad, they are killing me.”
Even after seven minutes into the video, when six cops are on top of him and all Thomas is doing is crying for his father, they keep telling him to “relax.”
Last year, Ron Thomas, a retired Orange County Sheriff’s deputy, said the City of Fullerton offered him $900,000 to just go away, which would have allowed the two cops to remain on the force unpunished for killing his son.
Thomas was pronounced dead on July 10, five days after the beating that left him in a coma.
(Read more here x)
I don’t want to be that “all cops are bastards” person, because I know they all aren’t, but fuck this makes it hard.
Awful.
There are shitty people out there who abuse their position in society.
Rest in peace, Kelly. I am so sorry.
I will NEVER trust cops, this complete bullshit.
REBLOG REBLOG REBLOG REBLOG REBLOGFor every share or comment on this picture on facebook, L.L.Bean will donate $1 (up to $1 million) to The National Park Foundation’s program to bring youth from under-served communities into the great outdoors.
Always reblog this. A lot of the animals they kill (and they kill over 95% of the animals they take in at their Virginia Headquarters) are killed within 24 hours. Not nearly enough time to deem whether an animal is adoptable or not. They even bought a giant fridge to store the corpses!
PETA is a corporation. Not a charity. Less than 1% of their 32 Million+ annual budget actually goes to directly helping animals. Most of it is spent making sexist/racist/ domestic abuse supporting commercials that won’t even air on television, giving bail outs to convicted arsonists and criminals, hiring/supporting any celebrity that claims to be vegetarian for five minutes, creating campaigns to target children (“Your mom kills animals”), fruitless lawsuits like suing Sea World for violating the constitution, and most recently, making porn. I’m not against porn, but I fail to see how it fucking helps animals.
PETA does not give a shit about animals.
Plus, these assholes have the gall to insult Steve Irwin.
So I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to sleep; and I’ll feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe. And I’ll keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are; I hope it’s nice where you are.
