#JUSTICEFORNICKTHOMAS
Police lies are standard operating procedure in the United States in 2016.
Here’s the news article from the day Walter Scott was killed. Apparently he confiscated the officer’s taser and was set to use it on Officer Michael Slager and the officer feared for his life and was forced to shoot. Of course we now know from video evidence released in the days after Walter Scott was murdered that he was shot in the back while running away and police at the scene lied in their reports, including moving the Taser next to the dead body in order to plant evidence on a man they just murdered.
Here’s the news article from the day Tamir Rice was killed. That day police apparently thought he was a man, (they would later say they thought he was 20), and that they saw him take a pistol from under the gazebo and stuff it in his waistband. They then said that an officer we now know to be Timothy Loehmann stepped out of the car and instructed Tamir to raise his hands who instead went for the pistol, at which point Loehmann, fearing for his life, drew his pistol and fired twice. Of course we now know from video evidence released in the weeks after Tamir Rice was murdered that he was gunned down with no warning, a mere 1.8 seconds after Officer Loehmann exited his car. Officer Loehmann maintained to the grand jury that he had shouted commands at the young boy as the police car approached him but that he had been shouting with all the windows rolled up. It was 13 degrees outside that day. Tamir Rice’s older sister, 14 at the time, rushed towards her brother shouting, “You shot my baby brother!” Officers tackled, and then handcuffed her, placing her in the back of their patrol car, and then called in to their station for what to do next, not administering any aid to the 12 year old child they just gunned down. It wasn’t until four and a half minutes after Tamir Rice had been shot that an FBI agent who had arrived on the scene realized that no one had begun to perform first aid and began to do so on the young boy. He would die eighteen and half hours later. We will never know if Tamir Rice could have been saved if he had received immediate and proper medical attention. Officer Loehmann was cleared of all wrongdoing and will face no charges for the incident.
Police lie. In both of these cases police and only police told a story that was repeated without question by the media. These stories bore all the hallmarks we have come to know when police kill people. “He made a move for his waistband.” “He was trying to go for my gun.” “I feared for my life.”
It has to make us question the veracity of “police said” as a corroborator when we consistently see video evidence that strongly contradicts official police narratives. Police supporters will point out that this type of video exists only in a small percentage of cases, the few bad apples theory. Anti-police activists will point out that every time there is third party video of police interactions with civilians there is always some sort of excessive use of force documented.
Nicholas Thomas was killed by police on March 24, 2015 in a Goodyear parking lot, when police attempted to serve him a warrant. Police said that he got spooked upon seeing them and hopped in a car and tried to speed away. Officer Kenneth Owens said Thomas accelerated towards other officers and that he feared for their lives, and so he shot Nick in the back, killing him. Nick’s mother said “he was a lovable guy” while talking to the media literally minutes after his death, and the press took that and ran with it calling Thomas in headlines, “The Lovable Felon.” The headline was really offensive, and I decided to look into it more.
Why was it that the police were so afraid of Nicholas Thomas in a car? In 2013, almost exactly two years earlier, on March 21st, Nicholas Thomas was charged with and later convicted of felony aggravated assault on a peace officer with a vehicle. To read the references to it in the media the day Nick was killed, they made it sound like he had a history of aggressively driving vehicles at police officers themselves.
I wanted to know more so I FOIA’d all the dashcam footage and police reports from that day and began to compare them. I immediately found some major discrepancies between what the police described happening in their reports and what was plainly evident from the video footage. Most notably, all the evidence for the charge of felony aggravated assault on a peace officer seems to have been invented out of thin air.
Let’s take a look first at Officer Feinauer’s report, as he was the officer driving the vehicle that was supposedly going to be struck.
It’s important that we note the wording of the law in Georgia for assault. From Chapter 5, Article 2, § 16–5–21 of the Georgia code, it reads,
“(a) A person commits the offense of aggravated assault when he or she assaults:
(2) With a deadly weapon or with any object, device, or instrument which, when used offensively against a person, is likely to or actually does result in serious bodily injury;”
In his report Officer Feinauer states, “I traveled eastbound on Town Center Dr (South) and attempted to block the suspect’s vehicle from returning to the roadway.”
This is the first key assertion, which we will see backed up by the reports of both Officers Fry and Putnam, that Officer Feinauer had blocked the path out of the parking lot and that Nicholas Thomas would have had to hit his police SUV out of the way to continue on his way out of said lot. However, dashcam video from that day disputes this assertion.
He goes on to state, “When I did, the offender accelerated towards my vehicle at a speed likely to cause serious damage or injury if we collided. I steered abruptly to the right, allowing the vehicle to pass. I then did a U-turn and continued with the pursuit.”
This is the second key assertion, again backed up in the reports of both Officers Fry and Putnam, that Officer Feinauer had to steer out of the way to avoid being hit. Note that he very specifically uses nearly the exact language used in the law to make his point clear. Again though, the dashcam footage from that day disputes this assertion.
Let’s take a look at Officer Fry’s report to see how he corroborated Officer Feinauer’s statement. As we will see in the video evidence, Officer Fry was sitting in the parking lot to the side facing Nick and then Officer Putnam as the passed him on his left, headed towards the exit and Officer Feinauer.
Officer Fry states, “I relocated my vehicle to the back parking lot exit of the Longhorn Steak House and observed Thomas driving his vehicle toward my patrol vehicle #3008… Officer Feinauer responded and arrived on Town Center drive South next to the parking lot exit of Longhorn Steak House, at which time Officer Feinauer maneuvered his patrol vehicle #4210 out of his lane to avoid being struck by Thomas’s vehicle that had traveled into his lane of traffic.” Officer Fry clearly corroborates Feinauer’s assertion that he had to move his car in order to avoid being struck. The video evidence strongly disputes this assertion.
Let’s look now at Officer Putnam’s report. Officer Putnam picked up primary pursuit of Nick after Officer Fry couldn’t keep up because Nick was driving a Nissan 350Z that day. He was directly behind Nick during the alleged assault and it is his dashcam that provides us the key refutation of all the officer’s assertions.
Officer Putnam states, “As I approached from behind, the violator sped off and turned right into a private parking lot. Ofc. S. Fry was stopped at the entrance onto a private driveway laned for traffic at one end of the parking lot. The violator was traveling directly toward Ofc. Fry’s patrol car and appeared to be threatening to crash into the patrol car, however, did make a slight right turn to avoid collision. The vehicle then traveled out of the parking lot onto Town Center Drive South that was laned for traffic with a double yellow line for no passing zone. Ofc. S. Feinauer positioned his patrol vehicle #4210 to block the violateors path to Busbee Parkway, and the violator accelerated appearing to have intention of ramming his way through and Ofc. Feinauer moved his patrol vehicle out of the violator’s path.”
Putnam clearly corroborates both of Feinauer’s assertions, instead of just the second one as Fry did. He states both that Feinauer had completely blocked Thomas’ way and that Thomas was intent on striking Feinauer’s vehicle. He also corroborates that it was only Feinauer’s maneuver out of the way that enabled him to avoid collision and certain injury. As we will now see in the video evidence, both of these assertions are categorically false.
Here is an overhead map of the parking lot in question with some key positions labeled:
Here are all four dashcam videos side by side. I used the audio of Officer Feinauer’s comment, “Okay he just tried to ram me coming out of the, uh, Wal-Mart there” to line up all the videos so they run right in sync with one another as they happened in real time that day. After the video plays, it loops again at 50% the original speed.
So a careful viewing of the video totally shatters both key assertions by the police that day. Remember, assertion one is that Officer Feinauer was blocking the exit from the parking lot, and assertion two is that had he not swerved out of the way Nick Thomas would have crashed into him possibly causing serious bodily harm.
It is plain to see that Officer Feinauer was never blocking the entrance to the parking lot, nor the lane Nick and Officer Putman passed by him on. The road he approaches on, which is Town Center Drive, is a three lane road, with a middle turning lane and two travel lanes going in opposite directions on either side of it. The lanes on the road are clearly visibly and his car is clearly positioned in the middle of the center lane. As he approaches the entrance to the parking lot he does veer a tiny bit to the left towards the parking lot entrance but as we can see in Officer Putnam’s video as his car passes Officer Feinauer’s, Officer Feinauer’s tire ends up on or just barely over the yellow line at the edge of the center lane at most. He doesn’t even cross halfway into the oncoming lane, let alone entirely over into it and past the exit, as he would have to block the entire passage. When Officer Feinauer makes his U-Turn he is also able to execute it in one try because he came to a stop before the parking lot exit, not in it. Had he actually been blocking the exit he would have had to make a three point turn at least to get out. Because he stopped short of the exit he has room to turn to the right and in one motion cut back around to the left and continue pursuit. We also can see that as Officer Fry exits the parking lot, Officer Feinauer is visible in Officer Fry’s dashcam and Feinauer has just started his turn to the right to enable himself to make a U-Turn. Officer Fry is the third car out of the parking lot. If Officer Feinauer swerved out of the way to avoid Nicholas Thomas crashing into his car, then how is he only just beginning that “swerve” as the third car is going past him? Furthermore, how was he blocking the exit at all if the first two cars were able to get by him before he even began that “swerve?”
I put Officer Putnam and Officer Feinauer’s videos side by side, and the fact that Feinauer was not blocking the way and did not swerve out of the way could not be more clear.
What seems to have happened is that Officer Feinauer simply said that Nicholas Thomas attempted to ram him on the police radio so that it could be used later on to charge him with a crime. Remember the assault statute, “With a deadly weapon or with any object, device, or instrument which, when used offensively against a person, is likely to or actually does result in serious bodily injury.” By stating that it was only the swerve that allowed Officer Feinauer to avoid the collision, the police created the intent to do assault with an object, in this case a car, that would be very likey to do serious bodily injury. Officer Feinauer was the most senior of the officers that day. He knew what language to use. He knew how to describe the physical events of the day so that there would be the proper language for an assault charge. Officer Feinauer then tells Officers Fry and Putman to corroborate in their reports that he was blocking the exit of the Longhorn parking lot and that it was only his swerve that prevented a crash from occurring. That may seem like a big insinuation but when you view the video evidence and see that what these officers described plainly did not happen, can you come up with another explanation besides collusion for how all three of them all described the exact same lie? With those lies backing each other up, the police now had enough to charge Nick Thomas with felony assault. A felony assault that genuinely never happened.
Why is this significant? Nicholas Thomas was killed by police officers in Smyrna nearly two years later to the day. When they went to serve him a warrant at his job at Goodyear, they saw on his record first that he had a record of assault on a peace officer, and with a vehicle no less. When Kenneth Owens made the decision to shoot at a car driving away from him, striking Nicholas Thomas in the back and killing him, he made that decision knowing about this assault charge.
I do not know how many times America will need to see cases like this laid out right in front our faces to finally wake up. What I do know is that on March 21st, 2013, Nicholas Thomas absolutely did not commit felony assault on a peace officer with a vehicle, and that on March 24th, 2015 this phantom assault absolutely did contribute to his death that day. I know that when we look closer we will find a thousand more lies, a thousand more unneccessary deaths.
#BlackLivesMatter
