L A County Homeless Programs - Politicians Just Closed front door on homeless

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oUSIz8UDbk]‪County vs Rescue Mission Dispute Over Homeless Care on www.fulldisclosure.net‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

 

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Small town cops prove how big they are by beating homeless man to death...

Homeless man's death in encounter with cops brings protests
14 Aug.`11 — Kelly Thomas was an often-seen fixture in this Southern California college town, a schizophrenic drifter described by his parents as easygoing and non-violent.

His death after being taken into custody by six police officers at a public transit station last month is the object of federal and local investigations, sparking weekly protests outside the police station and drawing concern from mental health experts who want better training for cops in dealing with the mentally ill. "Dad, Dad," were among Thomas' final words, a haunting, desperate cry captured on video by a cellphone as police subdued the 37-year-old just after darkness fell at the city's central bus and train depot July 5. The video has been viewed more than 694,000 times on You Tube. A hospital-bed photograph Ron Thomas took as his son lay in a coma shows a face grotesquely swollen and bloody, eyes blackened. "They just beat the hell out of him," says Cathy Thomas, Kelly's mother, who counts six applications of a Taser-like weapon on her son in the video. Thomas died five days later after being taken off life support.

Six Fullerton police officers have been placed on paid leave pending an investigation by the county district attorney, and the family has filed a legal claim against the city. A spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles office, Ari Dekofsky, says agents are investigating "whether Kelly Thomas' civil rights have been violated." Allegations of police brutality are hardly new, nor is videotaped evidence of it. Riots tore South Central Los Angeles in 1992 after four police officers were acquitted in the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney King. That racially charged scene was a far cry from the one here, 25 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. This conservative, majority-white, Republican-leaning city of 135,000 is home to a 35,000-student campus of the California State University system.

Police Chief Michael Sellers has called Thomas' death "a tragedy for our community" but offered no description or sequence of events that evening. With two of the city's five council members calling for his resignation, Sellers last week took a medical leave. Sgt. Andrew Goodrich, a police spokesman, said the department has nothing to say until District Attorney Tony Rackauckas makes a report. The six officers have not been officially identified. An attorney for the officers, Michael Schwartz, did not return a call for comment. Rackauckas said last week he has seen no evidence the officers intentionally tried to kill Thomas and that his investigators have not determined if the officers used excessive force. An autopsy was inconclusive and awaits the results of toxicology tests, said Rackauckas' chief of staff, Susan Kang Schroeder.

Investigators have another video of the confrontation that has not been made public but has been viewed by the officers involved. It was captured by a surveillance camera controlled by Fullerton police. Schroeder said investigators are not making it public to avoid tainting witnesses' memories, should charges be filed. Investigators have interviewed more than 80 witnesses, she said. Still another video was taken by a security camera inside a county bus that pulled into the station as the confrontation unfolded. With audio, it shows boarding passengers describing to the driver what they saw, with several saying police beat, hogtied and shocked Thomas. Ron Thomas, Kelly's father, a former investigator for the Orange County sheriff's department, wants murder charges filed. He said doctors showed him MRI scans revealing Kelly Thomas suffered two severe types of brain injury, one a lack of oxygen because his heart stopping, and the other blunt force trauma. "How can it be inconclusive when his face was so bashed in?" Thomas said.

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