Eight years have passed since the fatal beating of a homeless, schizophrenic Kelly Thomas by Fullerton police, but the tragedy remains a “deep wound” in the department’s psyche, says the city’s new police chief.
Thomas’ name has become synonymous across the country with excessive police force, and a rallying cry for changes in how law enforcement agencies deal with the mentally ill.
Fullerton officers hit Thomas with their fists, batons and the back-end of a Taser gun so brutally that the 37-year-old man cried repeatedly for his “daddy” before passing out. His death five days later triggered extensive reforms in how police in Fullerton and throughout California deal with the homeless and the mentally ill.
‘Watershed moment’
“That was a watershed moment in our business,” said Fullerton Police Chief Bob Dunn, who officially took the helm of the department in June.
Now the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is adding 500 jail beds specifically to deal with the needs of mentally ill inmates at the Intake Release Center in Santa Ana and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is building a $1.7 million facility in the City of Industry to provide training in how best to deal with the mentally ill, as well as mental health counseling for deputies.
Statewide, the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training has developed required sessions on dealing with the homeless and mentally ill.
In the vernacular of policing the homeless and mentally ill, outreach has replaced arrest.
“We’re police officers and we will enforce the law, but our focus is to be problem solvers,” Dunn said.
Added Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Vincent Plair: “De-escalation is our bread and butter … how to get out of the situation without using force.”
It wasn’t always that way.
Transcript reveals poor tactics
A transcript of the July 5, 2011, beating of Thomas — taken from security videos — shows the encounter starting off bad and getting horribly worse. The document was released recently by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office under Senate Bill 1421, California’s new police transparency law.
Nowhere in the 44-page transcript is a sense of compassion, a word that now guides Fullerton in dealing with its 473-person sheltered and unsheltered population.
“Society has to say, ‘What can we do to fix it?’ instead of looking at them like vagrants,” said Jesus Salazar, one of Fullerton’s two police officers assigned to work with the homeless.
David Jay, a 47-year-old man at an encampment outside St. Philip Benizi Church on Gilbert Street, is a small success story. He no longer shivers at the sight of a police officer.
Jay, barefoot and waving an orange lollipop, now calls the police “cool.” “I used to be afraid of everything, officers too,” he said.
The transcript shows where Fullerton — and many other police departments — were at nearly a decade ago in dealing with the homeless and mentally ill. It also shows how far many law enforcement agencies have come.
Coupled with video of the encounter, the transcript offers one of the most complete versions of the career-ending and life-taking altercation involving fired Officers Manuel Ramos, Jay Cicinelli and Joseph Wolfe. Ramos and Cicinelli were acquitted of criminal homicide charges in the beating; involuntary manslaughter charges were dropped against Wolfe.
Cicinelli and Wolfe are suing to regain their jobs, although city officials believe they mainly want back pay and to increase their pensions.
Expert analyzes police mistakes
The Southern California News Group provided the transcript to a police diversity trainer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. African-American studies professor Sundiata Cha-Jua was surprised by the lack of humanity shown by officers investigating a minor report of a shirtless man trying car doors in a restaurant parking lot.
The encounter begins with Ramos, swinging a baton in his right hand and approaching Thomas. Asterisks represent that a part of the dialogue is unintelligible:
Ramos: What are you doing man?
Thomas: Huh?
Ramos: What you doing?
Thomas: Nothing. What are you doing?
Ramos: Looking for you. … Were you trying to open handles on cars right now, door handles on cars?
Thomas: Hey I don’t speak English dude.
Ramos: Really? *** understand *** English. Obviously you do speak English.
Thomas: Nah I don’t speak English ***.
Ramos: What are you talking right now then?
Thomas: Speakish. … I don’t know, usually *** I talk to myself.
Ramos: You, you well you… listen to me, alright; I don’t have time for your bull—-. Were you trying door handles on cars right now?
Thomas: I don’t know what you’re talking about dude.
Ramos: OK. You wanna just answer the question, yes or no?
Thomas: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Cha-Jua said the dialogue “went wrong very early on, their intention was to harass the guy. It seemed like they were trying to provoke him.”
It’s unclear whether these officers knew Thomas from past contacts, but he had talked to police dozens of times before.
Later in the transcript, Ramos orders Thomas to sit on the curb.
Ramos: Okay. Sit down then. Put your feet out in front of you.
Thomas: You like my stomach?
Ramos: Cross your ankles. Hands on your knees, hands on your knees … put your feet out in front of you … one at a time. Cross your ankles is two, three put your feet, put your hands on your knees.
Thomas: My hands on my knees.
Ramos: Here right … you’re, you’re going reverse. Feet out in front of you, number one. Put your feet out in front of you.
Thomas: OK.
Ramos: Now, cross your ankles, number two.
Thomas: Uh-huh.
Ramos: Number three; put your hands on your knees … without moving your feet, there you go, just like that there you go. What’s your first name?
Thomas: Uh, that’s I … I, I … gave it already, I’m done talking you can call like (former sheriff) Corona or somebody man to help you figure it out ***.
Ramos: Put your hands on your knees. All we wanna do is … all we wanna do is figure out who you are.
Cha-Jua said forcing Thomas to sit in a confusing way didn’t help the situation.
“Sitting down on the curb, doing stuff in sequence served no purpose, other than to create and build tension,” he said. “I think they had no grounds for arrest so they were trying to build grounds for arrest. They are trying to create a confrontation.”
The transcript continues:
Ramos: You don’t wanna tell me your name?
Thomas: I thought you … I don’t know dude.
Ramos: I forgot your name, ***.
Thomas: I forgot it too.
Ramos: But it, it, it makes more sense that I forgot your name because it’s not my name, it’s your name.
Thomas: Oh.
Ramos: *** … do you want me to take you to jail dude and we’ll figure it out from there?
Cha-jua said the officer had resorted to “playing word games with a guy who’s mentally ill.”
From there, the transcript becomes a horrific script of pain, brutality and suffering.
A portion of that exchange is included below. The full transcript, which includes language that some might find offensive, can be found here.: Transcript of audio between police officers and Kelly Thomas
Thomas: …*** … *** help me my legs are broke, they broke, my legs are broken dad ***… dad.
Officer: Lay down. Lay down.
Officer: Lay face down.
Thomas: *** Okay, sir. Ouch. Ow … dad (SCREAMING). Ouch. Dad.
Ramos: There’s … blood everywhere.
Thomas: Dad help me. Dad help me. God. Help me.
Officer: Get him pulled up.
Thomas: Please dad help me. Help me please dad. Ouch. Ouch man. I can’t breathe. Dad. OK ***.
Officer: Grab a hold *** cuff him ***.
Thomas: Help me dad. Help me dad. Help me ***.
Officer Joseph Wolfe: Relax. Relax.
Thomas: OK. Help me.
Gradually, Thomas’ screams turn to grunts and then fade out all together as he loses consciousness. Cpl. Jay Cicinelli, who bashed Thomas with the back end of his Taser, remarked then how severely they had beaten him.
Cicinelli: We ran out of options so I got the end of my Taser and I probably. … I just start smashing his face to hell. (Pause) He’s on something dude.
Cha-Jua said police “provoked him for the beating he ultimately got.” He added that during the altercation, police repeatedly yelled at Thomas to stop resisting. Cha-Jua said that is a mantra he sees all too often while officers are smacking down a suspect.
“There’s nothing (in the transcript) to suggest the officers were in danger,” Cha-Jua said.
Specialized training the new norm
At the time, Fullerton police had little, if any, special training in how to deal with the homeless, especially those who were mentally ill. There was no $395,000-a-year “Delta Unit,” specifically formed to care for the city’s homeless and mentally ill. Half the funds for the unit come from a special North Orange County task force.
The two officers on the Delta Unit receive dozens of hours in training on how to interact with people with anxiety and cognitive and personality disorders, as well as how to interact with the homeless. Every new officer in the department receives at least 16 hours of crisis intervention training, most of which is developed by the state.
Many other cities are establishing homeless liaison officers as well, combining homeless and mentally ill outreach with enforcement to persuade people on the streets to accept services.
“There isn’t a way we are going to arrest ourselves out of the homeless issue,” Dunn said. “Our officers recognize that wholeheartedly. Our toolbox has gotten so much bigger in stuff we can pull from it other than handcuffs and a pen.”
In Los Angeles County, 34 mental evaluation teams — specially trained deputies and clinicians — join homeless evaluation units to service a difficult population.
“(Regular) patrol is very reactive, they want to get in and get out. With us, time is in our hands. We’ll wait it out,” Plair said. “You’re got to walk slow to go fast.”
Los Angeles County sheriff’s use unmarked cars with air-conditioning in the back seat to make things more comfortable for those deemed mentally ill. The deputies wear “soft” uniforms, their badges tucked inside black polo shirts. They try to speak softly.
“They try to find out what (the person) likes to talk about and use that technique to get them to comply,” Plair said.
Service over enforcement
POST training videos, used by virtually every police department in California, teach officers that while safety remains a top concern, providing service to the homeless and mentally ill often takes priority over enforcement.
“You’re got to work with the illness,” says Officer Robert Martinez of the Santa Monica Police Department in a POST video. “If you go head-on with a person, it could end up going sideways.”
Calming techniques also are used in Fullerton by homeless liaison officers Salazar and Matt Kalscheuer. About three times a week, a clinician from the county Health Care Agency accompanies them on their patrol. They offer advice, they offer shelter beds and medical referrals, they offer orange trash bags, which encampment residents fill and bring back for disposal.
The officers say they will hold onto property — old bicycles, sleeping bags and the like — taking it to the police station and returning the items when the owner reappears. They make sure residents at the encampment leave room on the sidewalk for wheelchairs to pass. And they make sure the encampment cooperates with the weekly power-washes to ward off vermin and illness.
Lucy Madrigal, 38, says Salazar and Kalscheuer kept her from losing her six children to social services. Now the kids, ranging in age from 7 to 17, live with her sister. Madrigal isn’t yet ready to leave the camp. It’s difficult for her to give up the freedom for the more structured life at a shelter.
“When she tells us she’s ready to get off the streets, we’ll make a few phone calls,” Salazar said, nodding to Madrigal.
“I can’t say anything bad about them,” Madrigal says. “They gotta be strict. Otherwise we’ll get too crazy.”
Kalscheuer says the secret to dealing with the homeless is “boots on the ground who get to know people and know what they need to get off the streets.”
Salazar was raised in Fullerton. Often, he finds people he grew up with now living in the encampments.
“I’ve been dealing with these people for years. I am bilingual. I have patience and I can understand people when they are down on their luck.”