Kelly J. Thomas: The Face of Police Brutality

Many things have yet to be clarified about this recent case regarding the death of Fullerton man Kelly Thomas at the hands of the officers of the Fullerton Police Department. So far from what I have gleaned from various reports is that on the night of July 5th, the FPD was called to investigate the possible car thefts near the Fullerton bus depot. What happened next can be seen here (it's a heart wrenching scene, be warned):

 

Kelly Thomas was pronounced dead seven days later at the UCI medical center. From various reports it has been noted that the police department was familiar with Kelly Thomas and knew that he suffered from schizophrenia. In the aftermath of the situation friends and family have spoken out in protest. The only thing I am certain of at this point is that indeed this is a case of police brutality: the degree of force used in subduing Thomas is no where near what would have been necessary. 

Kelly Thomas, the victim of police brutality.

I will be keeping up with the story as there is an undergoing parallel investigation by both the Orange County D.A. and the Fullerton Police Department. But ultimately this should make us question the treatment of the homeless and mentally ill  and the extent of police powers in our society. For more regarding the incident, go here.

Conclusion to the Raquel Nelson Case? I don't think so.

Today Raquel Nelson, a Georgia mother being charged with three misdemeanors because another drunk driver killed her son in a hit and run accident, was "spared" from a jail sentence as the AP reports it. While she might not have to go to jail, the prosecution (in all its mercy, of course) still asked that Nelson be put on probation. The judge in her increasing magnanimity gave Nelson a year long probation (per prosecution request) and 40 hours of community service. Perhaps the one silver lining in this case for Nelson is that the judge has also given her the chance for a retrial to clear her name, and it is hopefully at this trial that Nelson will finally be able to have a jury of peers. Yet it is sad to think that I don't believe that justice will ever be served for Nelson, in light of the states hardball prosecution of her and the light sentence given to her son's killer.

All prosecutor Annamarie Baltz had to say was "the state is bound to uphold the law" (in charging Nelson) and that prosecutors never intended to send her to prison. 

1. Prosecution never intended to send her to prison? So the goal was to scare a grieving mother and her two young daughters by convicting her of second degree vehicular homicide? What a vindictive use of the law, prosecutors! Not to mention a waste of Georgian tax payer dollars that went to fun your little court circus to prove that what? You can use the law arbitrarily to threaten citizens?
2. Why is Mrs. Nelson forced to do community service when it was Jerry Guy that caused the community tragedy? 
3. Does anybody think that this comes off as strange following the verdict on the Casey Anthony trial? I wont go into the details, but think about it- it's so incongruous.

For more info regarding Mrs. Nelson's sentence go here.

Justice Gone Haywire: The Raquel Nelson Case

A day ago I received an email from change.org regarding a petition to tell a Georgia judge to not jail a mother who was grieving her son who had been killed in a hit and run accident. I was surprised that this could actually happen, so I went on google to find out anything I could about the mother and what had happened to her famiy. 

The Raquel Nelson Interview with the Today Show

The story starts off on the night of April 16. 2010 when Raquel Nelson and her three children had gotten off at the bus stop across from their home in Marietta, Georgia. As several others who had gotten off at the same stop began crossing the dark street, AJ, Raquel's son, took off with the crowd perhaps thinking that it was their turn to cross the street. Immediately Raquel ran after her son and in that moment tragedy struck in the form of a tan SUV that sped off after hitting Raquel, her daughter, and AJ. While Raquel and her daughter suffered minor injuries, AJ was not so fortunate and died a few hours after being admitted to the hospital.
Police eventually arrested the driver, Jerry Guy, who admitted to a "few beers", painkillers, and a being partly blind in one eye. So now not only was it hit and run, but also a case of negligent driving (though the ads say buzzed driving equals =  drunk driving, it looks like the law books haven't caught up yet). Originally Guy was charged with first degree vehicular homicide, cruelty to children, and hit and run, but in the end he was only found guilty of hit and run. Though this had been his third time being convicted with a hit and run, Guy served only 6 months of jail and was allowed to spend the remaining 5 years of his sentence on probation.
Ironically the charges that Guy were not convicted with were used by the Georgia Solicitor General's office in convicting Raquel. She was charged with reckless conduct, improperly crossing a roadway and second-degree homicide by vehicle. Each of these crimes is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum punishment of 12 months in prison, so in total Nelson  faces a maximum of 36 months, or three years, in prison during her sentence hearing tomorrow.
The circumstances of this case seem utterly bizarre to me in many different aspects.

1. Why was Guy given such a light sentence and then allowed to serve probation, this being his third time being the perpetrator in a hit and run?
2. Coincidentally Nelson was charged with her crimes after the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a high profile article regarding jaywalkers noting that Nelson had not been charged with anything. Georgia DA saving face?
3. She's being charged with second degree vehicular homicide- so aside from the fact that she was not in a vehicle, and interpreting the crime as a crime of negligence, the charge still doesn't make sense. Indeed, she had not crossed at a cross walk (whose location about 3/10 of mile away has been source of previous complaints before this incident) but she did run after her son and was also hit in the process. I see no negligence in her effort to save her son.
4. Reckless conduct? Really? Really? Not to mention that even the hit and run driver had not been charged with reckless conduct, it should be the Georgia department of motor vehicles that should be charged with reckless conduct in allowing a person with such a bad driving record on the streets.
5. She was an African American single parent convicted by a jury of all middle class whites (jury of peers, anyone?) who did not use public transportation. While Nelson, herself has been very cautious about "pulling the race card" in regards to her trial- I think that the biases of jury, most likely their assumptions towards African American single mothers were clearly reflected in their speedy conviction of all three counts.
6. Probably the point of most contention is the fact that Nelson did not use a cross walk. First of all, I don't think the power of crosswalk would have prevented Guy from committing a hit and run while under the influence. Second of all, Nelson was just trying get her family home since it was dark and late outside- the dark cross walk 3/10 of mile away seemed just as bad if not worse, then just crossing the street in front of them. Third, SEVERAL people successfully crossed the street before the Nelsons did- and it was only the unfortunate chance that Guy happened to be drunk driving along the street that caused the tragedy.
7. Why is there so much focus on the mom? In all of the threads and comments regarding the story it seems like everybody is focusing on Raquel and how she failed to use the cross walk. Why isn't their outrage at how Guy is able to serve the rest of his sentence on probation? Why was he even allowed to drive in the first place with such a horrific record? Why do we put so much blame on the mother who has lost her son, and not on the actual man who killed him? Sexism, anyone?
8. How is putting a Raquel Nelson in jail for three years when she still has two young daughters to raise going to benefit society in any way? As an example to warn to people not to jaywalk if you're a single parent African American woman? Or that it will serve as legal precedent on how you can get away relatively unscathed if you kill a child in a hit and run after popping some pain pills and washing it down with beer? Or to show that justice is blind- completely blind to even common sense.
9. A commentator once said about the conviction of Nelson that "fairness has taken a backseat to justice"- to continue this car analogy I think fairness has not only taken the backseat, but has also been thrown out the window (letting Guy get out on parole), trampled once by justice reversing the car (charging Nelson with crimes), and run over once again by justice driving that car straight to sentencing.

One way to help out Raquel and the Nelson family is by signing the petition below that asks the judge to not sentence Raquel to jail. It also is requesting a new cross to be installed to prevent future tragedies from occurring. http://www.change.org/petitions/cobb-county-ga-release-grieving-mother-of-hit-and-run-install-a-crosswalk

For more on the story regarding the Nelson case go here and here.

I'll be waiting for the verdict tomorrow- hopefully it will be that Nelson can go back home to her little girls and move on with the loss of her son.

As they Say In CA: An Angry Panda Quote Round Up

Continuing on the unsure saga that is the present state and future prospect for the California public education system, I have rounded up the following quotes that I felt captured what was being said by all the characters in this unfolding story.

For your convenience the links to the quotes can be found here, here, here, and here.

PANDA PULSE #1: The State of California Higher Public Education

We all know it's been a terrible week for the California public education system (for most of us at least), and here are the numbers to prove it:

 For the stories surrounding the numbers go here (for UC) and here (for CSU). All facts and figures are from these recent sgate.com articles.

Follow Up: Buddhist Nun Arrested for Handing Out Prayer Beads

When I saw this story for the first time back in June, I was so shocked and angry at the unjust treatment of Buddhist nun Venerable Hong Yuan (she is referred by most news media by her non- Buddhist name, Baojing Li) at the hands of the NYPD. On June 2, 2011 the NYPD arrested in Chinatown on the busy street corner of Canal and Motts for handing out prayer beads to supporters who donated to her fund to rebuild her burned down temple back in Georgia (they claimed she was "hawking costume jewelry"-the NYPD at its finest). Though Venerable Hong Yuan could not speak English, many bystanders explained to the police the true nature of what she was doing, but all of the witnesses' pleas fell on deaf ears. Hong Yuan was subsequently detained for at least four hours without having anyone in the department explain to her what she had done wrong. For more on the original story go here.

FOLLOW UP: On July 8th, 2011 Venerable Hong Yuan refused to take a plea bargain that would require her to perform one day of community service and has asked the judge for the case to be dismissed. As of now the DA has not dropped the case yet. For the full update go here.

Baojing Li, 48, refused to plead guilty to disorderly conduct after she was arrested for selling prayer beads on Canal St. (DNAinfo/Shayna Jacobs)

Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/20110708/downtown/buddhist-nun-refuses-take-plea-deal-for-selling-prayer-beads#ixzz1STwVfJrf

This case can really be defined by how her lawyer Robert Brown bluntly states it: "If this was a Catholic nun in a habit giving out rosary beads, I can't imagine a police officer in the City of New York arresting her."

So kudos to the Venerable Hong Yuan for standing up for herself, because its not she who needs to do community service but obviously the NYPD that needs to be educated about diversity in the community! Hopefully the DA wills top wasting tax payer money to prosecute an innocent person on the count of the NYPD's mistakes.

Something is Rotten in the City of Alhambra...

This story originating in the city of Alhambra, California, back in 2007 had all the components of a modern day mystery thriller: a fiery blaze, a mysterious death, an eerie videotape, a government cover up, and a protagonist who had uncovered the truth only to be hounded by his own department. Though we rarely find so much drama outside of the movie theater, this was the exact situation that Ken Toh, a veteran fire protection specialist with the Alhambra Fire Department found himself entrapped in.
In the aftermath of the massive blaze of a Chinese strip mall that occurred on July 16th, 2007, the Alhambra Fire Department dispatched Toh to investigate the cause of the fire since he was the only individual in the department who could speak Cantonese and Mandarin. It is truly surprising to note that given Alhambra's 52.9% Asian demographic there was only ONE individual in the whole department capable of communicating with such a large portion of the community-but this is just the beginning of all the strangeness that follows.
Without performing a thorough investigation of the incident to determine the actual cause of the blaze, Fire Chief John Kabala hastily proclaimed to the media that the fire had been caused by an electrical fault in the Happy Bakery located on the eastern portion of the mall. What Kabala obviously failed to see was what Toh discovered to be the dead body of Charlie Lee, the owner of a frame store located all the way on the opposite end of the same strip mall. But it seemed Kabala had made up his mind, and so an electrical fire was an electrical fire despite the evidence that Toh had further amassed in security camera footage and witness testimony that pointed to an entirely different conclusion.

"Ken Toh and Mike Hatzbanian found security tapes of the dead man entering the building. The Alhambra Fire Department said it wasn't interested"- from LA Weekly

So what happens next? The Alhambra Fire Department instead of investigating the death of Lee, began a full-blown investigation of Toh, using surveillance techniques such as having a friend wear a wire to record Toh without his knowledge (Despite how illegal this may seem, apparently under CA law, investigation officers are allowed to record individuals without his or her prior knowledge).The fire department ultimately fired Toh after it had placed him on paid absence (they subsequently interrogated other people in the department and also fired them for being unwilling to testify against Toh in court- if this whole deal doesn't seem absurd enough, it gets worse). Toh was later prosecuted by the DA who ironically implicated him in the cover up of the fire, accusing him of being in cahoots with the strip mall owner Peter Fong to help Fong avoid a civil lawsuit for having faulty wiring by claiming it was arson. In the end the jurors saw how tenuous the prosecution's argument was and Toh was not convicted. However, Toh is still unable to find employment due to how badly the department has tarnished his name despite his fight for justice in the community (the Monterey Park Fire Depart balked at hiring a private company because it was later told that Toh would be the one doing the work!)  The mysterious death of Charlie Lee has yet to be fully investigated either.