A fired security guard at the Slidebar Rock-N-Roll Kitchen in Fullerton has filed a lawsuit accusing Lit guitarist Jeremy Popoff, an owner of the establishment, with enticing police to harass Kelly Thomas on the day officers savagely beat the homeless, schizophrenic man to death in July 2011, and then ordered staff to obstruct justice by lying about their involvement to homicide investigators.
In the 25-page lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court, Michael Reeves claims that he was first intimidated by Popoff to participate in the cover up and later fired after he cooperated in District Attorney Tony Rackauckas' probe that resulted in the arrests of two cops.
Reeves claims in the court filing that he had been expected to echo Popoff's “false mantra” that “Slidebar had nothing to do” with Thomas' gruesome demise because “as a former rock star” the Slidebar owner “was obsessed with Slidebar's image.”
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Prior to Thomas' death, that obsession prompted Popoff to ban all
homeless persons from entering Slidebar, according to the lawsuit.
“Popoff's
'no homeless people' policy kept Thomas out of Slidebar but it did not
keep Thomas out of sight, as Popoff wanted,” Reeves said in the court
filing. “So, in June 2011, Popoff called a meeting at Slidebar with all
his managers and instructed them to call police whenever they saw Thomas
around Slidebar and to do anything necessary to get Thomas away.”
Reeves
claims the staff initially called police to complain that Thomas, 37, was
loitering. Each time, arriving officers merely told him to move. “This
response did not satisfy Popoff because the police took too long to
respond and Thomas would always return to the area and spoil the image
Popoff had for Slidebar and himself,” according to the lawsuit.
Next, Reeves claims, “Popoff told Slidebar managers to do whatever it takes to keep Thomas away.”
On the evening of July 5, Reeves was on duty and saw Thomas in a nearby parking lot picking up cigarette butts.
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He said Jeanette DeMarco,
one of Popoff's managers, came to the front door area, saw Thomas and
said she was “going to take care of this.” DeMarco called the Fullerton Police Department's 911 line and made “a knowingly false report” that Thomas was breaking into cars, according to the lawsuit.
Based
on a disturbing video released by Rackauckas at an April preliminary
hearing, we know what happened next: A group of cops hassled, chased
down and unnecessarily beat the unarmed, 37-year-old homeless man into a
bloody coma. When the officers finished beating a man who'd committed no
crime, they stood over his dying, mutilated body and demanded that
arriving paramedics treat their minor scratches first. The veteran, heavily armed cops
later would claim they were entitled to use overwhelming force on the
scrawny, 135-pound Thomas because they feared he might kill them with–you can't make this up–superhuman strength.
The DA decided to charge only two of the cops: Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli.
A judge refused their request dismiss the prosecution's case as weak. A third involved cop may eventually be
charged too.
According to Reeves, Popoff, DeMarco and other
Slidebar employees committed crimes by illegally conspiring to make
false charges against Thomas and using a 911 call to trick police.
Popoff has not yet filed a formal response to the June 8 lawsuit. But in prior communications with the Weekly, he adamantly denied that anyone at Slidebar, including himself, had ever called police to complain about Thomas.
It appears that assertion might now be tested in court.
Reeves' lawsuit has been assigned to Superior Court Judge Tam Nomoto Schumann.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.