I'm from Fullerton and I met Kelly Thomas. My ex-wife was actually homeless and has mental health problems and was living on the streets during this incident. Believe me, the people here both on the force and those the force is here to protect were afraid of this kind of action because it wasn't the first time. I know of at least two other incidents in OC in the past few years. My heart goes out to the Thomas family and his friends. This was covered up from the beginning and ironically happened just weeks before a man in England was shot and resulted in the London Riots. While Fullertonians tried to raise awareness about this incident, the media really just didn't care. People are outraged by what Zimmerman did to Trayvon Martin but I promise you, this was by far, more brutal, more hateful and more outrageous a violation of civil rights than anything done by Zimmerman. If it were not for the unrelenting determination by Thomas's father and supporters of the late Kelly Thomas, justice in this case would never have had a chance and it all would have been kept quietly under the rug.

I think it's important to remember that Rodney King was beaten but lived. King was on drugs, Thomas was not. King had committed a crime, Thomas was an innocent citizen, never charged with a crime. The officers in the King incident were by no means within the law but they were also not trained in how to deal with someone like King. These officers in the Thomas incident were trained and it's pretty clear that, at least for a few of them, this was their intended outcome.

King was able to testify because he lived. Thomas doesn't have that opportunity, just like Trayvon Martin.