“The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.”

–Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

We recently wrote about the senseless Fullerton Police killing of Jose Naranjo Cortez this past Easter, and their killing of 19-year-old Pedro Garcia just a month before that. But we don’t want you to forget about their totally unnecessary killing of Alejandro Campos Rios a year before THAT – a story from March of ’24 that still leaves more questions and concerns than ever.

You might remember that incident – Alejandro was the thin 50-year-old who was “spazzing out” in front of the Brookhurst McDonald’s & swinging around a belt (not hurting anyone) and ended up getting killed by Fullerton cops using allegedly “less-than-lethal” beanbag rounds. 18 months later there are many things we don’t know, including:

That was around 3am on March 6, 2024, when a female manager called in to the police worried because (at that point) TWO homeless-looking guys were “spazzing out” in front of the restaurant, and she was concerned about the employees who’d be showing up soon for the morning shift and would “have to come in the front door.” (Actually there ARE two other doors to that McDonald’s; in retrospect too bad they didn’t just use those.)

When the police arrived they got one of the guys to leave, but Alejandro just kept dancing around, shirtless by that point, singing and babbling to himself bilingually and now and then swinging his belt around – he just wouldn’t stop! No matter how they asked him to sit down, to put down the belt, to relax.

So, doing all they knew how, one cop fired a taser at him a few times, which didn’t seem to faze Alejandro one bit. Meanwhile a second cop used a shotgun to fire “less-than-lethal” beanbag rounds at him, most of which missed, but at least one of which (the last one) managed to wound him fatally, and Alejandro fell and didn’t get up. (See 14:31 and 15:12)

“Less than lethal,” yeah, right. PBS documented over a thousand deaths over the last decade, caused by methods police classify as not lethal. As always in these videos, Sgt. O’Neil insists that all of this was within policy: “All beanbag munitions were fired at the recommended effective range.” Yeah, effective is correct, if you wanted to kill the guy, but should spazzing out with your belt and not hurting anyone be a death sentence? Isn’t there a problem with this being policy? Whatever happened to the MindOC/BeWell idea of mental health workers who are TRAINED to safely pacify people like this (if necessary?) Is that so 2022?

Eighteen months later, there has still been no investigation completed, not by DA Spitzer (as Kimberly Edds confirmed to me) and not by the Attorney General, who is SUPPOSED to investigate when the victim is unarmed. We’ve never seen the official autopsy, and Alejandro’s death certificate still has “cause of death” marked blank. And yet, the City of Fullerton settled with Alejandro’s family for $2.3 million! The people of Fullerton, OC, the US, still have questions!

Good thing at least that we have an independently performed autopsy, done in Nebraska and paid for by the family. But before we get to that, we must introduce you to:

Yvonne De La Torre

In this blog’s experience with police killings there’s usually just ONE family member (or friend) who makes it their life’s mission to find justice and the truth for their loved one. Sometimes there’s more than one, sometimes there’s nobody, but usually there’s EXACTLY one person, and in Alejandro’s case it is his longtime partner Yvonne De La Torre. (This fine article features a nice video interview with her.)

Yvonne and Alejandro lived together for 29 years, since they met in 1995 – a little older than him, she already had three kids (whom he treated as his own) and soon there was also Alejandro Junior. She says he was a great father and the kids loved him.

It wasn’t till around 2023, at age 48 or 49, that he started showing signs of mental illness. The sort of spazzing out we saw on video is something Yvonne began to see at home, and had nothing to do with drugs. Yvonne will tell you, and the literature confirms, that there is a machismo making it hard for Mexican men to admit to mental challenges – or their parents either.

She eventually got Alejandro to see a therapist, who diagnosed him with “high stress levels and anxiety” and prescribed him some kind of meds, which he took for a while and seemed to help a lot, calming him down and letting him be productive.

But soon enough he tired of those good meds, probably started taking other worse ones, and created such stress that he found himself living back with his parents in Buena Park, and then on the street. When Yvonne heard about the killing at McDonald’s she had a bad feeling it could have been Alejandro; and soon enough her daughter confirmed it.

What could have happened, why did they have to kill the man she’d spent more than half her life with, whom she knew to not be dangerous? A friend referred her to an attorney, who wisely arranged to get an independent autopsy after the official one. Because just think of the conflict of interest we have in a county where the Sheriff and the Coroner are THE SAME OFFICE – how did they get away with that?

The attorney Yvonne found managed to get the City to pay Alejandro’s family a $2.3 million settlement which you did NOT read about anywhere – he must have had a real good case that none of us got to hear. Cities and police forces like to keep the money they pay out hush-hush, and if they DO make a statement about it they assure the public that it comes from their insurance and is no big deal to the taxpayer. And these payoffs usually come at the price of a gag order on the family. Doesn’t seem like a whole lot of motivation for reform or progress, does it, paying off the families, keeping them quiet, and telling the public nothing? So this just keeps happening.

But at some point Yvonne was sidelined from the case, since she and Alejandro never married and had broken up a year earlier. Meaning she got none of the money, and she missed out a lot of information at the trial, but it also means that there’s no gag order on Yvonne De La Torre! And one thing she does have is the independent autopsy on Alejandro, and now we have it too!

The Nebraska Autopsy

So, to go by the closest thing we have to an official record of Alejandro’s killing – which is the FPD “Critical Incident Report” video above – to go by what is said by the narrators and to watch it uncarefully, it would seem the first four beanbag rounds fired at Alejandro missed him or maybe just grazed him with little effect, and that it was the fifth and last beanbag round that caused his death, made him fall and bleed to death from a deep wound to the chest cavity.

But if you read the independent autopsy and watch the video more closely, you see that it was the FOURTH beanbag round, hitting the fragile, shirtless guy in the arm, that got the death process started. After describing a superficial graze wound on the back of the arm from one of the first three rounds, the Nebraska coroner describes this:

And sure enough, you can see Alejandro react to that fourth round, he cries out a little and starts to slow down. It’s the fifth round that makes him back up, sit down and wilt, the beanbag to the chest cavity:

Not releasing any official investigative report, for 18 months, gives rise to suspicions and conspiracy theories. We remember, it took the DA that long to cook up a report dishonestly exonerating the Fullerton cop who killed Hector Hernandez a few years ago. Some are talking about a possible second shooter, maybe using “live rounds.” Some witnesses say they heard more than five gunshots. People do want to know who the beanbag shooter was, even if it WAS an accidental killing and “within policy.”

And most importantly, what changes will be made so that the NEXT person, who’s acting strange and making people uncomfortable but not hurting or endangering anybody, doesn’t get accidentally slaughtered by “less-than-lethal” methods???

Dare to Struggle, October 22

Yvonne has hooked up with a police-justice group called Dare to Struggle, a “multi-national organization” especially active in Fullerton lately. They’re currently preparing for a big event in Santa Ana this October 22 (Wednesday) which they’re calling O-22. I’ll be signing off now (Vern out) and copying over their spiel about O-22 from their website:

O22 National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality

Since 2020, over 7,000 people across the United States have been killed by police, and every year is more deadly than the last.

The mass rebellion in response to the public execution of George Floyd, which shook the system to its core, was strangled, pulled, and led into the ground by politicians and opportunists.

Since then, a few killer cops have faced charges, trial, and prison time, but most of these murderers with a badge get away with their crimes. The police keep serving and protecting white supremacy and capitalism, and in that role, they are sanctioned to brutalize and kill.

In 2024, police in the US killed 1,375 people, the highest number ever recorded.

The police respond to people in a mental health crisis with taser-guns and bullets. They prey on Black, Latino, Indigenous, and proletarian youth, stalking them in squad cars, brutalizing them and throwing them into the prison pipeline, or just shoot them dead. In response to rising homelessness, homeless people are being criminalized, with police carrying out brutal raids on encampments. Despite the tough talk about Trump’s immigration policies from liberal and progressive politicians, the police have assisted in the kidnapping of thousands of people by ICE agents, brutally beating, shooting, and arresting protesters in the process.

And there is no serious movement in this country to stop this. The protest movement in response to police brutality has been derailed time and time again by politicians promising reforms and grifters using the movement for their personal gain, and without intervention, the same thing will likely happen to the current spontaneous uprisings against ICE.

Justice Department investigations, legislation, police review boards, and other reforms cannot end police brutality because it’s baked into the government on all levels and the entire system. It’s a fundamental tool, along with mass incarceration, to keep oppressed people controlled and subjugated.

Families Demanding Justice and Dare to Struggle are working to rebuild the movement against police brutality and for justice for Black and other oppressed people on solid foundations by getting people organized for the National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality on October 22 (O22).

The movement we are seeking to build puts families and loved ones of the victims of police murder at the forefront, reviving a powerful weapon against police brutality.

We will unite all who can be united in this struggle, regardless of identity. And we will reject begging for reforms from politicians in favor of mass action.

We will be going to neighborhoods under the gun of police brutality throughout the summer and fall to mobilize youth and those who have the courage to stand up and speak for themselves and their communities. We will unite families and loved ones of victims of police murder from around the country to join in and take a leading role in the O22 National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality. 

Join us October 22 to demand:

NO MORE MURDERS & BRUTALITY BY THE POLICE!

SEND KILLER COPS TO PRISON!

END THE CRIMINALIZATION OF BLACK, LATINO, & INDIGENOUS YOUTH!

END THE CRIMINALIZATION OF HOMELESSNESS & MENTAL ILLNESS!

NO MORE MILITARIZED POLICE REPRESSION OF PROTEST!

STOP THE ICE KIDNAPPINGS OF IMMIGRANTS!

If you want to help rebuild a real fighting movement against police brutality, but you aren’t near a Dare to Struggle chapter, fill out this form and we’ll hit you up.