Reason.tv: Cops Vs. Cameras: The Killing of Kelly Thomas & The Power of New Media
This video includes graphic images. Viewer discretion is advised.
The autopsy results from the death of Kelly Thomas, a schizophrenic drifter who was allegedy beaten to death by Fullerton, California police will be announced today by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas. Rackauckas will also announce whether he will file charges against the officers involved in Thomas' death, following the office's investigation. The confrontation with police took place at a municipal bus station on July 5, with Thomas dying in the hospital five days later. This press conference comes weeks after the Fullerton police refused to answer questions about the case.
Regardless of today's announcements, Thomas' death is a case study of how ubiquitous phones with cameras and the Internet are transferring power from the government, police, and the media to the masses. Images and word of the beating spread not because of official communications but by viral cell phone video of the incident and a horrific hospital photo taken by his father of Thomas in a coma.
We already know how influential citizen video can be from the 1991 Rodney King beating in Los Angeles. Now that practically everyone has a camera with them on their cell phone or other device, says Michael German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, it is increasingly difficult for authorities to dictate the flow of information.
“Technology has changed so much that we now carry cameras and recorders on our very person everywhere we go so it is very easy to immediately pull them up and take a video of whatever is happening,” says German.
That is how the Kelly Thomas video was recorded, but it didn’t find its way to the nightly news right away like the Rodney King beating. Ron Thomas, Kelly Thomas’ father, told Reason.tv that after initial interest, the media stopped covering the story.
“Nothing was going on, I tried contacting everybody, nobody cared to do anything,” said Ron Thomas. “So, I released the picture of my son [in his hospital bed] and that got everybody’s attention. When the cell phone video came out, I released that. The audio had their attention again. You put together the picture with the sound of what’s happening is very, very compelling.”
Those images came after the Fullerton police department decided not to release any information, including the names of the officers or even whether Kelly Thomas had a Taser applied to him, a detail that is heard in the video.
Jarrett Lovell, a criminologist at California State University, Fullerton, says the fact Ron Thomas was able to release information before the Fullerton police department‘s public information officer, Sgt. Andrew Goodrich, underscores a shift in power away from authority to citizens. “That the victim’s father, Ron Thomas, was able to release public information before the public information officer from the Fullerton department shows this shift in political power at the local level from police to the citizenry," says Lovell. "Citizens can be the media themselves.”
Lovell has written about the role of public information in his book Good Cop/Bad Cop: Mass media and the cycle of police reform, and points out that the Kelly Thomas case seems to be a case study for what public information officers and what law enforcement agencies, “should not do.” He says that because the Fullerton police department has not gone public with the facts of the case or released the names of the officers, it looks like they have something to hide. “Public information is essential to keep check on government,” says Lovell.
After the photo and video were released, the Fullerton community reacted in outrage at city council meetings and at protests outside the Fullerton police department. Whatever charges are filed (or not) today, the death of Kelly Thomas will remain an example of how new media is changing the old guard.
Written and produced by Paul Detrick, who also narrates. Camera by Detrick, Alex Manning, and Zach Weissmueller. Special thanks to Ron Thomas.
About 8 minutes.
Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions of this video. Subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel for automatic updates when new content is posted.
Related videos:
You're Killing Me: Was a police-related jailhouse death an accident or a homicide?, August 11, 2011
The Killing of Allen Kephart: How the police lost the trust of a law-and-order town, July 5, 2011.
The Government's War on Cameras, May 26, 2011.
UPDATE:
The Orange County District Attorney's Office has charged Officer Manuel Ramos with one felony count of second degree murder and one felony count of felony manslaughter.
Officer Jay Cicinelli faces one felony count of manslaughter and a felony count of excessive force.
For more on the charges against the officers, check out Mike Rigg's live blog of the press conference.
For developing news on the Kelly Thomas case, visit the Friends for Fullerton's Future blog.
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I hope the cops that did this get charged with murder, are found guilty, and sent to prison with the same types of people who just happen to not be cops.
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You're clearly a bigot, Restoras. How dare you expect convicted cops to be treated like little people?
RULE OF LAW!!1!
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It's only really a crime when a black person is beat by the cops. White people beaten to death isn't a crime, it's 'social justice.'
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Good point.
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You have one out of three anyway, for now.
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Video recordings of an outrageous incident can spark the appropriate outrage in a way no written or verbal description could possibly do.
Police departments that are slow to recognize and adapt to increased visual scrutiny of their misdeeds are going to suffer slight annoyance at the fleeting public relations problems they will read about in the back pages of the local papers.
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They'll have to adapt and learn to check for cameras before beating someone to death. Not hard at all to detail one officer to look for cameras before you drag a guy behind the car or building to beat him.
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"This man clearly died of natural causes."
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Indeed. And Fullerton would be remiss were it not to award those officers medals.
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Hey, batons are made of wood and shoes of leather. Completely natural.
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In some ways, the police hatred of cell phone cameras is similar to my hatred of ubiquitous public surveillance:
They really don't believe that the technical requirements of their jobs are reasonable. They rely on the fact that those requirements aren't routinely imposed on them. The more they are forced to stick to the letter of the requirements of their position, the less tolerable they find it.
As an example: in almost all instances, 25 MPH speed limits are just too low. I can tolerate the presence of 25 MPH speed limit zones because they aren't actually enforced. I just drive through them at 40 and never get a ticket and never hit anything and everybody's happy. But if you designed a perfect speed surveillance system that always gave me a ticket every time I violated a 25 MPH posted limit, I'd be forced to slow down and actually obey. And that would be simply intolerable, because such limits aren't actually reasonable.
To the police, always having to have probable cause, and having to limit your use of force, and only being able to apply more force if someone is "resisting", and not being able to use disorderly conduct laws to abuse people who just don't "respect" them enough, and not being able to subtly alter the facts of an incident when testifying in order to fit it into the statutory definition of a particular crime, aren't reasonable requirements. They've tolerated the existence of rules limiting their behavior and providing recourse to citizens only because it was extraordinarily difficult for anyone to actually apply those laws to them. They firmly believe that they won't be able to function if they can't beat up the schizophrenic guy who keeps coming back to commit more petty crimes and never goes away. Or pretend they had probable cause to do a search when they didn't. Or testilie. All these are as necessary to the police as driving 40 in a 25 zone is necessary to me, in their view.
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I think that is probably about right. And in the police's defense, they may have somewhat of a point. But, too bad. Perhaps if they had to live by these rules and the public then had to live by those consequences of those rules, we would have a real debate about our criminal procedures and alter them. That is the proper way to do it, not having cops just ignore any rule they don't like.
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Exactly.
The drug war in particular has created entire categories of crime that require the police to routinely step outside the letter of the law.
I'm sure if you let me drive around the slums of Baltimore for a couple of hours, I could rapidly figure out who the drug dealers were. But that's not the same as having probable cause that can stand up in court. So if I had to arrest someone by the end of the day, I might look up the most recent case law giving the current working definitions of probable cause, and pretend that I had it. Because in my mind I'd be thinking, "You fucks sent me out here to arrest someone, and I got the right guy, so who gives a shit?"
But if I was absolutely forced by technology to not do that, the public might get the hint that some of their laws aren't really enforceable in a free society.
Of course, the danger is that the public will reach the opposite conclusion: that the limits currently placed on police have got to go. And that's a real possibility. If the police were subjected to panopticon surveillance, we might quickly reach a point of outrage fatigue - where video of police beatings and "Respect my authoritah!" behavior became so common that they ceased to shock and became the expected norm. We might not be too far from that post - reading the comments any time a newspaper puts one of these videos up on its site can show you that. There's a portion of the public that sees police beating some guy who's being held down, and says, "Good. Kick that nigger's ass."
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I think we would get some outrage fatigue. But here is the thing. The public owns its rights. And it is up to the public to preserve its rights. Yeah, I know the courts are supposed to be above that and can push the envelope a bit beyond what the public wants. But in the end, the public, if it chose to could bring the Courts back in line to what it wants. In the end, the public needs to know and understand what is happening out there. It can then make its own decision. I have faith that the public would chose to put a stop to real abuses if it knew about them. But if they didn't, then tough luck. We get the government and the police force we deserve.
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The whole system is designed to be hidden. Give one good reason why police interviews are not taped beginning to end in a black box that can only be opened by a judge?
Because the public wants the convictions, and doesn't want to know how they were obtained. -
I'm sure if you let me drive around the slums of Baltimore for a couple of hours, I could rapidly figure out who the drug dealers were. But that's not the same as having probable cause that can stand up in court. So if I had to arrest someone by the end of the day, I might look up the most recent case law giving the current working definitions of probable cause, and pretend that I had it. Because in my mind I'd be thinking, "You fucks sent me out here to arrest someone, and I got the right guy, so who gives a shit?"
This has been the predominate narrative fed to us by media since Dragnet. We've had a whole generation raised exposed to the message constructed by Jack "tough guy who couldn't make it in the military so went back home crying to Momma" Webb,:
[who] had tremendous respect for those in law enforcement. He often said in interviews that he was angry about the "ridiculous amount" of abuse to which police were subjected by the press and the public. Webb was also impressed by the long hours, low pay, and injury rate among police investigators of the day, particularly in the LAPD, which was notorious for jettisoning officers who had become ill or injured in the line of duty.[9] In announcing his vision of Dragnet, Webb said he intended to perform a service for the police by showing them as low-key working class heroes. Dragnet moved away from earlier portrayals of the police in shows such as Jeff Regan and Pat Novak, which often showed them as brutal and even corrupt. According to one Dragnet technical advisor, when the advisor pointed out that several circumstances in an episode were extremely unlikely in real life, Webb responded, "You know that, and now I know that. But that little old lady in Kansas will never know the difference." -
the danger is that the public will reach the opposite conclusion: that the limits currently placed on police have got to go.
I think TV has already done that for us. Has there been a cop show in the last 20 years where the pure and righteous cop never ran up against a "bad" guy who is protected by those darn civil liberties? 99% of them go-around them to get that guy the audience has been told is guilty. And there's the implication that only the super-cops on TV have the guts to do it, the regular non-super-cops let themselves be restrained by the silly old constitution, written in a language not one understands and has no relevance to the modern world where everything is suddenly black and white.
Hell, the causal "We need a warrent." "Oh, hey I think I hear someone calling for help. [KICK]" is so commonplace it's a groaning cliche.
"But those are bad guys," the public thinks. I'm not a bad guy, so whatever happens to bad guys is OK by me."
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As stated before, my glucose-avoiding friend, you can thank the odious Jack Webb for that.
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Absolutely agree about TV and movies. I literally have to leave the room when my wife is watching one of those cop dramas.
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You make it sound like the job is an Amazon Warehouse job or something.
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Well said Fluffy.
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or when they blow me in dark alleys until I spill copious amounts of seed.
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In this day and age, why shouldn't every cop be equipped with a small video camera and recording device at all times on duty. You could easily make the camera the size of a lapel pin and the recording device the size of a stick drive. It is what we do with special OPS teams, why not cops? Forget dash cameras. We can have cop cameras. Then there would never be any doubt about what happens. It is very technologically feasible and not that expensive.
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Your idea presumes that the authorities are averse to having doubt about what happens.
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Of course they would have a fit over the idea. But tough luck. The idea makes sense.
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In that we certainly agree
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As I sit here, eating my peanut butter crackers and drinking my mtn dew, I find this idea to be a good one.
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Sunglasses, a spill of coffee, a readjusted lapel, a stick drive crushed by a "resisting" "civilian"... the only think that might work is a flying camera hovering right out of baton reach that is also impervious to bullets.
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True enough. But it would at least make them take some effort to abuse people. You would only do those things if you really had a good reason to do something. So it would cut down on it some.
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Drone cameras! Perfect!
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Without video to corroborate, po-po testimony would be inadmissable.
Problem. Solved.
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Stream the video up to a separate server while you are recording.
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I dont't think you can get this past the police unions.
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Bingo.
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I would thoroughly enjoy an open debate on the topic in the public sphere. Give me a governor who's willing to stand up to the police union and refuse to budge on the issue, just so I can see how said union tries to debate against it.
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How worse could it be than the NYPD PBA President making excuse in a press conference on why it was ok for Loumia to be sodimized by a cop?
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semi-related:
I once worked for a company that had the idea of attaching GPS trackers to garbage trucks. It would allow the company to calculate the best route, confirm that loads have been picked up, and allow billing based on weight.
The drivers (and union) freaked. From what we gathered, many drivers were basically picking up (commercial) trash for cash-under-the-table.
btw, I thought the whole project was fairly pointless - IT'S ONLY GARBAGE! But hey, there's money to be made in strange ways.
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But it is the company's truck and gas they are using to pick up trash under the table. It is not only garbage. It is the gas and the truck.
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I believe he was refering to the efficiencies not the graft.
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In this day and age, why shouldn't every cop be equipped with a small video camera and recording device at all times on duty.
Holy shit, John, taxpayers aren't made of money, you know. We're in a recession.
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Some departments do. Even mo have dash cams. But they need to be more ubiquitous, and streamed live to the public.
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I agree 100%
So the interesting question is: Who believes government really believes in sunshine? -
Not only should we have the ability to monitor cops in real time, we should have the ability to punish them in real time. If we provide access to thecop-cam feeds on the internet, we can then allow the watchers to activate the shock collar in the event of misbehavior.
BZZZZZZZT!
BAD DOG. BAD BAD BAD!
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I predict a slap on the wrist.
Those boys are union men, after all.
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Absent the video and publicity, I think you would be right.
And that's exactly why I bust dunphy's chops about a double standard. There is no possibility that a non-LEO beating a man to death wouldn't be prosecuted. Especially if he did it in front of a bunch of LEOs.
But, when an LEO does it, he has much better odds of walking or getting a light sentence.
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I mean, seriously, the double standard is on full display here:
Rackauckas will also announce whether he will file charges against the officers involved in Thomas' death, following the office's investigation.
There would be absolutely no question whatsoever that someone who beat a man to death in full view of several witnesses, especially LEOs, would be charged. But if its a cop, well, maybe, maybe not. Tough call, in that case.
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I've got nothing against Dunphy, but I can't help to think back to his comment that the "picture looks bad".
What? Couldn't admit that was bad?
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cameras, photons, pictures....how do they work?
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Finally they are prosecuting the cops in the College Park case in Maryland. But the shennigans with the evidence - remember this is a totally police controlled environment....reminds me of Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn't bark.
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...and when you mention the double standard, I mention that the standard for cops is a lower standard. A private citizen is held to a higher standard than the so called professional.
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Or it being excused, period.
An important thing to keep in mind is this would have blown over if Ron Thomas didn't get it back into the media and the people getting pissed.
It would have been some scumbag getting what he deserved. Case closed.
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Will Reason.tv have people at the DA's press conference today?
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much better odds of walking or getting a light sentence.
Because EQUAL JUSTICE demands it. You wouldn't want to have that poor little lamb exposed to his prior victims on equal footing, you know. The baboon troop intimidation and bullying are not as effective, when the playing field is level.
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Downey: What did we do wrong? We did nothing wrong.
Dawson: Yeah, we did. We were supposed to fight for the people who couldn't fight for themselves. We were supposed to fight for Willie.
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Police Motto:
"To protect and serve."
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All six officers should face charges or civil rights lawsuits for incompetent, lethal restraint.
DOJ statement in 1995 on avoidable death in restraint or custody: Positional Asphyxia and Sudden Death http://bit.ly/fWyJKg
Asphyxial Death During Prone Restraint Revisited: 21 Cases http://bit.ly/p86G5F
Prone restraint, if used at all, should last only seconds. There should NOT be a "struggle" on the ground. People die very quickly in this position. The DAs investigate and prosecute these suffocation deaths all the time.Where are the constitutional challenges to lethal forms of restraint?
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2 police officers charged in death of homeless man.
At least the justice process is starting.
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Cop says, "I better not find myself on Youtube" after beating some teenaged skateboarder. hahaha. Tough luck, sucker.
I guess I can see why they don't want to be filmed.
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