Brandon Ferguson

Ron Thomas at an earlier Fullerton city council meeting

UPDATE, May 23, 5:34 P.M.: Citing unspecified media outlets, radio station 89.3 KPCC is reporting that all six officers involved in the Kelly Thomas beating have been given letters of intent to terminate. Be sure to read the original post below for our coverage of Ron Thomas's appearance this morning on Air Talk with Larry Mantle. During his interview, Thomas confirmed the Fullerton Police Department gave three officers: Joe Wolfe, Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli letters of intent to terminate. Citing state law, Fullerton police have declined to comment on the matter. 
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Joshua Suddock/OC Register

Local blog Friends for Fullerton's Future is reporting officers Joe Wolfe and Manuel Ramos have been handed termination papers. The information was leaked to the blog by an anonymous source inside the Fullerton Police Department who said the firing stems from the officers' refusal to talk to independent investigator Michael Gennaco. Attorney Gennaco was hired by the city following concerns of a cover up in the aftermath of the Kelly Thomas beating. Both officers were involved in the deadly attack last July, but so far, only Ramos and another officer, Jay Cicinelli, have been charged in the death. A call to Fullerton Police Spokesman Jeff Stuart wasn't immediately returned.More >>

Chris Victorio

Cathy Thomas at a protest for her son last year.

To end a potential civil lawsuit against the Fullerton Police Department for savagely killing her son Kelly Thomas last July for no good reason, city officials tonight announced they will pay Cathy Thomas $1 million. 

The settlement, approved by a 5-0 vote, was announced at the city council's meeting following a closed-door session.

Ron Thomas, the victim's father, has not yet reached a settlement with the city.
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Marisa Gerber

Ron Thomas at an earlier Fullerton City Council meeting.

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On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of talking about the Kelly Thomas murder on The Tom Leykis Show. I had Facebooked Tom the horrific beating that the Fullerton police inflicted on Kelly; Tom was so disturbed that we talked about the incident for two hours, taking phone calls from apologists and non-apologists alike.

Leykis is a self-described supporter of cops, but the video so disturbed him--"worse than Rodney King," he repeated again and again--that he's now out to ridicule those killers. And his best way to ridicule is to immortalize the target as one of the "Take Me Out..." clips listeners traditionally request after ending their call, like "Kobe style" (Kobe Bryant's weak-ass apology to his wife after cheating on her backed by the sounds of a moaning woman) and so many more.

Now, behold "Fullerton PD style"
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The two officers charged with the death of Kelly Thomas will have to answer for their actions at trial. Orange County Superior Court Judge Walter Schwarm rendered his decision at 2:30 p.m. following a three-day preliminary hearing. Referring to the felony charges faced by both Manuel Ramos (second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter) and Jay Cicinelli, (involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force), Schwarm ruled there was enough evidence to believe "Mr. Ramos and Mr. Cicinelli are responsible for those felonies as charged."More >>

The first thing I thought of when I heard about the Kelly Thomas beating was the first cover story I wrote for OC Weekly some 16 years ago. "Fullerton Metal Jacket: When The Police Go Military, The City Goes Vietnam," was published on March 8, 1996, just months into our paper's existence. It concerned the unsolved murder of Ramon Toro, a Mexican immigrant who was shot while attending a meeting at an alcohol-rehab facility in Fullerton. The bullet had been fired during an altercation on the street outside, and the shooter was never identified.More >>

Ramos: Can't take a scraped elbow

The moment I saw the photo of Fullerton police officer Manuel Ramos--fresh from participating in the beating death of Kelly Thomas--holding up his scraped elbow like a tot taking a tumble after falling from his tricycle, I knew we had to do something.

Moxley will torch Ramos and his apologists, as will Nick and Matt in their respective posts--but hard-hitting journalism doesn't suffice. Ramos' expression is juvenile and vile in demonstrating the arrogance that some officers have when it comes to people daring to question their brutality. It deserves mockery. It deserves a meme, the lowest form of Internet humor, the domain of cats and witty quotes framed around Fry from Futurama. And so...
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Shapiro: Weenie

I remember weenie Breitbart.com columnist Ben Shapiro when he was a precocious snotnose back at UCLA taking the Hugh Hewitt road to fame: whining he was a conservative in liberal-land, and thus getting a column in the local paper despite exhibiting little talent but a hell of a lot of weenie-ness. He's continued on that path, becoming a columnist and author appealing to the stupidest side of the conservative spectrum.

Want proof? Shapiro just post a column to Breitbart's Big Government with the headline "Police Beat White Homeless Man To Death, Media Ignores."

He then tries to mitigate his weenie-ness by writing, "The media attention surrounding Thomas' death has largely been local in nature; few national stories have focused on the beating. That's no doubt due to the fact that Thomas is white; were he black, the media certainly would have jumped on the racial angle."

Um, yeah...
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Ashley MacDonald RIP

**READ OUR 2003 COVER STORY ON OC'S 31 SCARIEST COPS!**

The shocking video footage of six Fullerton cops cursing, threatening, and then beating the living crap out of mentally ill homeless person Kelly Thomas was finally released yesterday, some ten months after Thomas died from his July 5, 2011 injuries. The brutal killing is rightly being greeted with outrage. Sadly, however, what makes it a uniquely chilling case isn't the actions of the officers involved, but rather the fact that they were caught on film, and that the camera also captured the heartbreaking audio of Thomas repeatedly apologizing to the officers who were torturing him, pleading for mercy as they beat him into the coma from which he never woke up.

But perhaps the most shocking aspect of the Thomas killing is the fact that the cops obviously assumed that there would be no consequences for their actions. In fact, they had every right to expect that, because until now, not a single cop in Orange County history has ever been prosecuted for killing someone in the line of duty. What follows are five particularly memorable examples of OC cops killing people--actually four successful killings and one attempted one--and then getting away with it.
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