I guess attacking the 145 pound man out of view of the dashboard camera was not sufficient to cover his crime. The Fullerton, California police officer was also wearing an audio recording device. A device that captured the intent of the officer to do harm to Kelly Thomas. That recording despite multiple witnesses and video recordings of the officers brutally torturing a prone and defenseless Kelly Thomas was the lynchpin in the DA's decision to prosecute.
Before reaching the decision this week to charge a Fullerton police officer with murder, Orange County prosecutors re-created his fatal encounter with a homeless man from dozens of witness statements, footage from security cameras and cellphone videos.
The piece of evidence that sealed the decision, however, came from an unexpected source: the officer himself.
An audio recorder carried by Officer Manuel Ramos captured a chilling exchange between him and Kelly Thomas, in which Ramos told the mentally ill man that he was going to beat him. Those irrefutable words, said Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas, proved Ramos was intent on hurting the defenseless Thomas and led Rackauckas to file the second-degree murder charge.
As Ramos snapped on a pair of latex gloves and leaned over a confused Kelly Thomas, prosecutors say, his body microphone and surveillance tape captured an angry threat: "Now, see my fists? They are getting ready to 'F' you up."
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas called the statement the "turning point" from which a routine July 5 police stop spiraled into an explosion of violence that eventually involved six police officers and left Thomas unconscious and in a pool of his own blood. He was removed from life support and died five days later.
In the 10-minute long beating, Fullerton police officers pinned Thomas to the ground so hard that he had trouble breathing. Prosecutors say he was shocked four times with a Taser, kneed in the head, punched in the ribs and bashed eight times around the face with the butt of a stun gun as he cried out for his father and begged for help.