Keith Kimmel, the regular Queerty commenter found dead at a friend’s home on Wednesday, was the one who got aggressive with police after a fight at a gay bar (that he blogged about), police are saying.
Kimmell was “verbally aggressive, was physically aggressive, was not cooperating in the least,” says the police department. “He was taken into custody at that point.” From our previous report, that altercation stemmed from Keith’s public argument with an ex-partner. But it was Kimmel who filed a report on Monday claiming police brutality, and he has the photos to show it.
It’s clear Tulsa Police are intent on framing the show-down in their favor, and with Kimmel no longer alive to give his side, it’s likely we may never know what transpired that night. In the meantime, an autopsy is planned for Kimmel’s body
joedee1969
Speaking of being brutalized, our favorite bear is going after The Catholic Church. Now I really love him!
http://americaspeaksink.com/2010/04/pedophilia-religion/
Cam
The guy admitted that he was really drunk and started punching a friend of his for no reason. Just a guess here, but somebody who is throwing punches at a best friend and then has to be thrown out of a bar by cops isn’t going to go quietly. What he’s got on his stomach looks like a rash from getting forced down onto the ground while resisting. What I don’t see is any bruising on his face, his wrists, or anywhere else on his body, and if this guy had bruises or marks like that he’d be showing them. If a bunch of police officers wanted to brutalize this guy during an altercation he would not just have a patch of road rash on his stomach.
terrwill
@Cam: Excellent point on the road rash, based on all that has come out on two tons of not so much fun Keith, he most likely was looking for another lawsuit to file once the cops came on the scene. And based on him being so morbidly obese one would guess his heart was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode…………
fredo777
@terrwill: Making fat jokes about the recently deceased guy who may or may not have been brutalized. Classy.
terrwill
@fredo777: please read the stories about this guy, I was being kind with my joke, there have been lots of serious charges levied against this guy. I am not among those who feel that just because someone is Gay that we must cannonize them upon death………..
Jason
This whole thing is just bad.
I WAS going to make a fat joke, but I don’t want to go to hell as I already live in sin, ehgage in minor shoplifting and curse.
Alexander A.
Ouch… that looks painful, like he was face down and someone dragged him. Can’t say he was BRUTALIZED, though. If he was resisting (something I don’t think he was charged with), sure you get some scuffs in the course of resisting arrest. Too bad we’ll never know the truth.
Lanjier
I think if you disobey a direct order from a police officer who asks you to leave, or come with them or lay down, you should lose your civil right to complain about police brutality. People make trouble themselves by disobeying an order, requiring the police to use force on them. You should not be allowed to disobey a police order, and then be allowed to sue them when you get the worst of it. Police have enough to worry about. It is not a gay issue at all. It is a drunk guy at the bar issue.
James
All the talk about “disobeying a police officer” is bogus, because that is just a stock excuse for any behavior they wish to justify.
Preliminary reports suggest he died of a blood clot as a result of the beating, which makes it Felony Murder in the state of Oklahoma (as well as a federal hate crime).
Lanjier
If he invited the police to use force on him for the purpose of subduing him, that can result in injury and/or death. The fault for that is the guy causing the disturbance, not the police that had to intervene.
Testosterone and alcohol don’t mix. They can get your brains fucked out without protection, or land your ass struggling with cops. As sad as it is, the lesson has nothing to do with police, and everything to do will not letting your balls think for you.
Cam
No. 9 · James
All the talk about “disobeying a police officer” is bogus, because that is just a stock excuse for any behavior they wish to justify.
Preliminary reports suggest he died of a blood clot as a result of the beating, which makes it Felony Murder in the state of Oklahoma (as well as a federal hate crime).
_______________________________
James, you have to realize some things.
1. The Police were called to the club because this person was engaged in the assault and battery of another patron. This person on his own blog admitted that he was drunk and doesn’t know why he was beating the other person.
2. There are no other marks on his body visible, a “Beating” or brutilization would result in other bruises or marks. Additionally, he was violent and ejected from the bar. I don’t see people getting up in arms when people on the show “COPS” who are behaving violently are subdued forcebly.
3. All of that aside, something qualifies as a hate crime with the action was taken against the person on the basis of them being a member of one of the protected classes. Something does not qualify as a hate crime just because it happened to a member of a protected class. The police were called on this guy because he was committing a violent felony against another person. If he was bruised in the situation that is not a hate crime, that is a standard arrest of a violent felon.
edgyguy1426
Nope we certainly don’t have to canonize anyone upon death but we don’t have to use them because you have a cute play on words you’re dying to try out.
verily
Now I realize.
This is what I dislike about our modern world, this voyeurism into others’ lives. A life that I WOULD HAVE NEVER gone out of my way to interrupt, yet here I am looking at this corpse’s abdomen and wondering to myself if obesity is a moral failing, it is, but also thinking that my paying attention is a failure as well. It is.
fredo777
@terrwill: His being gay wasn’t really part of my point, tbh.
B
No. 8 · Lanjier wrote, “I think if you disobey a direct order from a police officer who asks you to leave, or come with them or lay down, you should lose your civil right to complain about police brutality.”
Counterexample: a friend told me about how his mother, at that point a very frail senior citizen, was dragged out of her car after a traffic stop and left with bruises that took weeks to heal, because she didn’t get out of the car as fast as the officer(s) wanted. She was probably a bit confused and flustered, but she was physically not capable of getting out of a car easily.
Apparently, they complained and the police department simply stonewalled, saying their officers don’t do things like that.
B
No. 11 · Cam wrote, “The police were called on this guy because he was committing a violent felony against another person. If he was bruised in the situation that is not a hate crime, that is a standard arrest of a violent felon.”
A (relatively quick) Google search didn’t show up any evidence that a felony was committed (a bar fight is not automatically a felony), but the reports indicated that Kimmel was outside the bar when the officers arrived, having already been ejected.
If those abrasions were caused by him being dragged along the parking lot, it qualifies as either unnecessary force or lack of adequate care. If they occurred while being knocked down (unlikely as that would tend to cause bruises, not road rash), the police would have been behaving reasonably given an uncooperative suspect. They could have handcuffed him, got him onto a blanket, and dragged that, or just waited for enough manpower to carry him. The reports were silent about how he was ejected from the bar, so it could have been someone else instead of the police who caused the abrasions – there is no way of telling without more information.
The reports also claimed that the police made comments about his sexual orientation and his weight which, if true, is highly unprofessional to say the least (with the exception of talking about how to move someone that heavy).
If he had merely been arrested, given the circumstances I’d consider that to be his fault and his alone.
ewe
What was the criminal charge that he was taken into custody for? There had better be one. Sounds like routine government intrusio to me. What else is new? What’s the charge? If there is no charge then there was no allegation of a crime and he should never have been detained.
ewe
@Lanjier: You sound misinformed and insulated.
Space Jesus
That image rivals larvae breast in the severity of how my eyes twinged in pain.
http://z.about.com/d/urbanlegends/1/0/5/D/breast_larvae_sm.jpg
MikeyM
I agree 110 percent with Terrwill. Stop with the sainthood status. I doubt seriously he was all that and a bag of chips. His behavior and physical appearance should speak volumes about the kind of person he was. So he sued over a car tag. Big deal.
Here’s a guy who is being called a “gay-activist”, and being gay and involved with the gay community myself, yet I have never heard of him before now. I may have read something about the car tag matter, but that’s it.
A lot of times assholes, gay or straight, like to take on the title of activist because they think it gives them the right to act like assholes and get away with it because the other 99 percent of people out there are afraid of encroaching so-called “civil rights” of people like this.
Sounds to me like, and looks to me like, the dude was pretty IRRESPONSIBLE with his life. First off, let me be the one to say it, he was a fat slob. People who are responsible about themselves don’t let their physical condition reach the point of morbid obesity that he had let himself reach.
He was beating another person in a bar fight. Ok. Need I say it again? Responsible, mature, right-in-the-head people don’t beat up on others, regardless of the situation, drunk, mad, what have you.
I wasn’t there and apparently neither were a lot of the other posters here .. so none of us know for a fact what happened. …. but I tend to believe, based on people like this guy that I know or have encountered in my life, he was probably being a total prick in his attitude toward the cops when they showed. The fact that he was BEATING someone severely AND that the cops had to be called in, should tell you a LOT.
When the cops came, he was probably throwing his “activist” status around and defying them to touch him, move him, throw him out, etc. I would put my next paycheck on it.
Any bruises (of which I see one smaller than the one I received playing hockey the other day) and pavement burns he received were of his own fault and doing by disobeying the police. And when something that large is refusing to move, you’re not going to be able to easily move it by force without exerting some contact pressure. If he hadn’t been so big, the scratches wouldn’t have been so large and looked so “bad”.
Sorry folks, but I agree, just because someone is touted or proclaimed as a “gay activist” acts up and gets dead, they should not be automatically canonized and the cops blamed for his death. How about a little responsibility for actions here? He was the one who chose to get drunk, get violent and then defy law enforcement. So now, whose fault exactly is this? Not the cops I’d say.
Chances are, as has been stated already, he was morbidly obese and most likely would have been dead on this day anyway, regardless of what happened to him in a bar scuffle or with cops.
So go ahead and flame me, call me a hater or a gay-basher if it makes you sleep better tonight……. because it doesn’t mean a thing to me in the end.
I’ve made my point and it’s the truth in what I feel. And chances are, the truth in probably what a lot of others feel as well, but are just afraid to go against the flow and speak their mind.
A big problem with the gay family – a lot of hypocrisy in those speaking out and the rest who jump on the bandwagon just to be jumping on…but yet inside, feel completely different but don’t want to be spurned because they did speak their true mind.
MikeyM
And Lanjier pretty much gets it as well. Spoken in words that should be able to reach most people easily enough.
EWE – what closed world society do you live in? I think you’re the one misinformed and insulated. Get a clue, for your own sake.