When Cops Know They Can Get Away With Murder: Spitting on the Memory of Kelly Thomas

This Thursday, Kelly Thomas would have turned 44.

July will mark 7 years since he was murdered. 

When the news of Kelly Thomas’ murder broke, it hit like a tidal wave in my little OC town of Fullerton. I remember it well because it was my birthday and I was having coffee with a friend in downtown Fullerton. When she told me what had happened, news was just starting to leak to the press. We were walking distance from where Kelly had been beaten into a coma only a few nights earlier and I was without words hearing her recount what she’d heard. They took Kelly off life support later that day.

When pictures of Thomas hit the news (don’t look away), Fullerton made national headlines and the top of every news hour. We were under great and justifiable scrutiny, swimming in media for months.  In the days, weeks, and months following Thomas’s murder, our community mobilized came alongside in the best ways it knew how. It felt inadequate, but genuine. All of the things you expect to happen did … Protests, art benefits, ongoing media coverage, more conversations about how law enforcement needs to do better in regards to engaging those with mental health issues, and more conversations about how to better care for those who were homeless and living with mental illness. And while I was less than thrilled about their replacements, there was the necessary political upheaval which resulted in the Chief of Police stepping down and the removal of three city council members in a recall election. The good ‘ol boys club was alive and well in Fullerton, so it was good riddance to the bad political rubbish that continued to defend the inhumane, brutal, and criminal death of a homeless man through it’s unwavering political alliances. While we waited for the trial to come, we started to heal. Sort of. It was always there. It felt unfinished, unresolved, in limbo. It still feels that way. The trial came and went, and as expected by most of us who are old enough to be jaded by the system yet still work for it’s change, we watched as those who killed Kelly get away with murder . It was devastating, but on some level, unsurprising.

But there was a shift for Fullerton residents, one that the mostly middle class community had gotten to watch from afar and never had to navigate before. For many folks here in our little town, shit got real. Despite the very real NIMBY attitude that existed, for many, a sense of fear and distrust of the police increased. For others, it was simply another confirmation of what their experiences with law enforcement had taught them long ago. I’d like to think it was a watershed moment for Fullerton, an awakening to why marginalized people don’t trust the police that are there to protect and serve them, but I’m not so sure it was. We tend to forget things, or maybe we would just prefer to. It was no coincidence that Kelly’s death came when it did. It happened at a time when the rise in recorded and shared deaths of citizens at the hands of law enforcement, many being POC, were on the rise. In the several years that have  followed, our country has been unable to turn away from it’s (not new, but) ongoing epidemic of police brutality and murder.

A few years following his death, there was faith-based vigil that I attended. In what opened as a Christ-centered acknowledgement of communities of color and the sin of systemic abuse that occurs within them, things quickly turned and devolved into a prayer centered around ‘blue lives matter.’ There were cries emphasizing a cooperation and peace that required nothing from law enforcement. It was a call that required us to, again, look the other way and trust a part of the system that refused to check itself. It felt dismissive and painful and incredibly upsetting. It was not reflective of what I understand of God’s heart or the call for God’s people to seek justice. My friend and I – stunned, grieved, disappointed, angered, and horrified – walked out in protest. My heart ached. There is no peace in the absence of justice. I long for peace too, but not at the expense of or the silencing of people who are most affected by the lack of it.

More recently, Ramos, Cicinelli and Wolfe are back in the news.  The Feds are refusing to acknowledge Kelly’s beating and resulting death as a human rights violation, so Cicinelli and Wolfe are fighting to get their jobs back. The great entitlement, the immense lack of ownership, the total disregard for humanity, the absence of repentance and remorse by Cicinelli and Wolfe for the murder of Kelly Thomas is something I have not been able to find words for yet. The sheer audacity and conscienceless of this is staggering to me, even when it perhaps should not be.

When cops know they can get away with murder, they ask for their jobs back.

When cops know they can get away with murder, they want to go back into the very system through which they killed.

When cops know they can get away with murder, they ask for their back pay and full benefits.

When cops know they can get away with murder, they ask for their ranking back.

And, subjugating justice and ethics to fears of legal retribution, we let them.

Let that sink in.

We would rather avoid a lawsuit by considering allowing violent, unrestrainable officers who were legitimately fired for their breach of public safety and trust back into authority. We would rather let officers who beat a person to death AND barely escaped  murder charges, back on the street with a gun and a badge than do what’s right and protect our citizens from them. We, as a collective society, would rather permit them back into position of power and put public safety, trust, and ethics ahead of whatever legal fallout there could be. That is just as significant commentary on our systems and who we are as a society as it is as the officers who killed Kelly Thomas. And while I will never forget Kelly’s name, I also want to never forget the names of the officers that took him.

Jay Cicinelli

Joseph Wolfe

Manuel Ramos

If we allow Officers Wolfe and Cicinelli to be reinstated, we are spitting on Kelly Thomas’s grave, on his memory. We are co-signing and approving the state-sanctioned murder of the lesser represented and over-targeted, the most at-risk and vulnerable, the  preferably unseen and intentionally ignored in our communities. It’s like watching and listening to Thomas and everyone else who has died at the hands of police die over and over again. And I, for one, can’t turn away from that. I am asking you not to either.