L.A. Liberty

‘See My Fists? They're About To F**k You Up’: The Motto of the Fullerton PD →

Recently released video captured by Fullerton, California surveillance cameras last July 5, shows officer Manuel Ramos, and exceptionally well-fed Fullerton, California police officer, assailing Kelly Thomas — a much smaller homeless, schizophrenic man — with profane abuse, eventually snapping on latex gloves and threatening to “f** [him] up.”

Contrary to the much-repeated claims of the Fullerton Police Department, Thomas at no point presented a threat to anyone, especially the girthy, heavily armed Ramos whose voice and mannerisms were those of a sadistic bully, rather than a conscientious peace officer fearing for his safety.

Professional photographer and civil liberties activist Carlos Miller narrates what follows:

Thomas is standing while Ramos is ordering him to get on his “f*cking 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 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.

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.

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 “f*cking 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.

Five minutes into the gang assault, a few additional cops arrive, prompting one of the initial assailants — who had likely grown weary of beating and tasing the victim — asked the new arrivals to “help us.” Had an actual peace officer been on the scene, he would have intervened on behalf of the victim. The Fullerton Police Officers, however, eagerly joined the thugscrum, which eventually numbered at least a half-dozen and as many as nine officers — an aggregate weight of more than a half-ton of armed, tax-fattened humanity focusing its aggressive violence against a pitiful, sick man who weighted less than 150 pounds.

In familiar fashion, the assault was frequently punctuated with the refrain “Stop resisting!” — a demand made only by rapists and police officers. In his death agony, Thomas called out for his father, retired Orange County Sheriff’s Detective Ron Thomas.

“Dad, they’re killing me!” moaned Thomas as his life ebbed away.

“His death was gang-involved, the way I see it,” declared Ron Thomas after viewing the mangled body of his 37-year-old son. “A gang of rogue officers … brutally beat my son to death.” This act of gang violence was inflicted as “street justice” for the unforgivable offense called “contempt of cop.”