Lew Rockwell Blog
January 14, 2013
Kelly Thomas died as a result of being beaten, tasered, and
suffocated by a thugswarm of police on the July 5, 2011. A jury in
Orange County, California — an authoritarian conservative community in
which the “Support Your Local Police” movement took root and flourished
in the mid-1960s — has
acquitted the two ringleaders of that police gang, Manuel Ramos and Ken
Cincinelli, of all charges arising from that atrocity.Manuel Ramos, who harassed, taunted, and terrorized Thomas for nearly a half-hour before the beating began, was charged with second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and faced up to 15 years in prison. Cincinelli, charged with criminal assault, confronted a four-year prison term. Both were fired from the Fullerton Police Department following a public outcry.
“You see these fists?” Ramos grunted at Kelly, a mentally ill homeless man who was sitting peacefully on the curb. “They’re about to f**k you up.” Such language comes easily to Ramos, who in both his private and professional lives is an enthusiast of gang culture. Thomas had done nothing to warrant attention on the part of the police, let alone a violent arrest. He was beaten with fists, batons, and the butt end of a taser; at various times during the assault, all six police officers — nearly three-quarters of a ton of privileged, tax-fattened, costumed suet — piled on top of the 160-pound man, crushing his chest and causing terminal asphyxia. Thomas died crying out for this father, retired Sheriff’s Deputy Ron Thomas.
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