What Kelly Thomas Can Teach Us About the Power of Cameras

Police in Ferguson do not have dashboard cameras and have not
yet implemented body cams, though they had
purchased the latter prior to the shooting of Michael
Brown.

Camera footage would have offered the public important details
about the shooting and possibly cleared up the conflicting accounts
between officers who say
Michael Brown attacked them and eye witnesses who said he was

running away when the officer shot him in the back.  

Reason TV’s Paul Detrick covered the case of Kelly Thomas, a
homeless man with schizophrenia who died after Fullerton police sat
on him and beat him, in 2011. The case only garnered national
attention after a graphic cell phone photo showing Thomas’s
disfigured face and surveillance footage of the incident emerged.
The officers involved eventually faced trial after immense public
pressure, but a jury acquitted them.

Watch the video above. The original write-up is below.

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.

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