Will the Victim of Fresno Police Beating be sent to Gulag?

Glen Beaty, the homeless man beaten by a Fresno Police Officer, is still in jail. The beating incident, which took place on February 9, 2009 was caught on video by a passerby. For the last several months Beaty has been in a crowded cell in the Fresno County jail where he told me he is given one hour a week to get out and exercise on the roof. He is being held on a no bail felony for assaulting a police officer.

The officers involved in the beating incident have not been charged with a crime and the Fresno Police Department will not release their names. Community groups have requested the officers names so they can see if the officers have been involved in other excessive force incidents. Beaty’s attorney has not been given the police report of the February 9 incident.

Fresno police chief Jerry Dyer, at a February 12 press conference, assured the community that this incident would be fully investigated, an independent investigation by the District Attorney’s office would take place and he said that report would be reviewed by the California Attorney General. When a Fresno City Council member inquired about the DA’s investigation, they were told that the report was not yet complete. Beaty, in a jailhouse interview, said that the DA’s office has not yet interviewed him about the incident. The incident took place 3 months ago.

Rather than conducting a transparent independent investigation of this apparent excessive force incident, local government, the police, and the criminal justice system have held Beaty in Jail, had him declared mentally incompetent to assist in his own defense, and are in the process of having him shipped to a state mental institution. While this sounds like something that might have happened in the Soviet Union (shipping political dissidents and people who know inconvenient truths to Siberia), it is business as usual in Fresno.

Beaty should not be sent to a U.S. Gulag where he may never be heard from again. The Community Alliance newspaper demands that the truth be told about this incident, that Beaty is not further victimized, and that more transparency is used in the affairs of this city’s government.

Background information is available here:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/02/10/18569420.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/02/12/18569804.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/02/13/18570224.php

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Mike Rhodes is the editor of the Community Alliance newspaper in Fresno.