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College Student Claims Fullerton PD Slammed His Face Into Gutter, Stomped on His Head
Photo by Gunnar Pippel via Shutterstock
A college student in Fullerton is stepping forward to say that he was wrongfully arrested and then abused by officers with the Fullerton Police Department.Christopher Spicer Janku, 23, has come forward with his story on the blog Friends for Fullerton's Future, which has been following the fatal beating of Kelly Thomas and other allegations of abuse by the city's police department.
Janku said that his encounter with the Fullerton PD happened in August 2008, when his friends were pulled over for running a stop sign in downtown Fullerton around 1:30 a.m. Janku claims that after getting pulled over, the police wrongly arrested him for public drunkenness. He said he's not sure what he did to rile up the officers, except that he asked them not to look through his digital camera. Police asked him to sit on the curb, and that's when Janku said things took a turn for the worst. In his own words (and the caps are all his):
Before I could even say “officer my hands are already crossed behind my back” the officer grabbed my neck and slammed my face into the curb while yelling out “stop resisting!” Another officer grabbed me by the legs and dragged me by the knees, shredding my knee caps.
Another officer then TOOK HIS BOOT and slammed it on my head, pinning it between the curb and used it as leverage to squeeze pressure on my head. I HONESTLY THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE, I WAS SCREAMING PLEASE STOP I’M NOT RESISTING, I THOUGHT MY HEAD WAS GOING TO CAVE IN. I still have migraines to this day. another cop came over and dropped kneed me in the back. Everybody watching was in awe, THEY KEPT YELLING OUT “PLEASE STOP, HE’S NOT RESISTING!”
He (Thayer) was the one who slammed me face first into a curb and then put my head in the gutter face first with his boot on my head. He purposely put my face into a gutter full of disgusting dirty gutter water to the point where I was almost choking on it, and pushed down on my head to the point where my head almost caved it and I was screaming for my life. If you look at my mug shot, there is nothing but dirty, muddy gutter water and blood all over my face.
Janku said the ride back to the station didn't give him a respite from abuse. The police cranked up "satanic heavy metal music" and "brake-checked" six or seven times suddenly, so that Janku's face was slammed into the grate of the police car.
Janku followed up with the police department, but he claims that he was stonewalled and told to call back. His arrest was downgraded to a "detain." Now he's worried that he's waited too long to bring a suit against the (already embattled) department.
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