Orange County Pays Out $195K To Teen Threatened At Gunpoint By Off-Duty Sheriff’s Deputy

When you thought American cops could­n’t find any new ways to dis­grace the badge they are so proud to wear and dis­grace their pro­fes­sion, they show that there is no floor to how low they will go to abuse their power.
What makes their actions even more rep­re­hen­si­ble is (a) the Government’s insis­tence on inter­fer­ing in small­er coun­tries polic­ing prac­tices and tak­ing puni­tive mea­sures against them, & (b) that there is a huge part of the coun­try for whom crim­i­nals can do no wrong as long as they wear police uniforms.
The sad real­i­ty for the coun­try is that as vio­lent crime begins to creep up again after decades of decline, police rep­u­ta­tion across the coun­try is in tat­ters, except for the polit­i­cal right for whom police is a vital par­ty of their white suprema­cist infrastructure.
The nation is so heav­i­ly invest­ed in the police state that it has cre­at­ed that it is impos­si­ble to see how it could extri­cate itself from the cocoon in which it has woven itself. Whether it be the need for the over 18’000 depart­ments nation­wide, as a means to keep its black com­mu­ni­ty on the reser­va­tion, or the pri­vate­ly run pris­ons that oper­ate on the express under­stand­ing that jail cells must be filled to a stat­ed capac­i­ty, polic­ing as we know it, bru­tal, cor­rupt, racist, crim­i­nal, is going nowhere soon.

The myr­i­ad depart­ments in some cas­es oper­ate as guns for hire, speak­ing of the sher­if­f’s depart­ments that are run by elect­ed coun­ty offi­cials who pro­vide their ser­vices to the county.
It is a con­vo­lut­ed web of deceit and decep­tion in which the cops, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges all share the same goal, and that goal does not always line up with the goals and aspi­ra­tions of black and native people.
We have tried to bring to your atten­tion some of the facts that sup­port our claims that jus­tice in many instances is what [they]determine it to be.
When the aver­age per­son of col­or can be locked up on man­u­fac­tured charges after some cop abus­es them phys­i­cal­ly, not to men­tion their rights being vio­lat­ed, but a cop can com­mit bla­tant crim­i­nal offens­es and pros­e­cu­tors do not pros­e­cute, you know the sys­tem is a farce.
But please do not take it from me see for your­selves, and the irony of it all is that their crimes are no longer a prob­lem just for black and brown peo­ple. In fact, their crimes are also affect­ing their own mem­bers, past and present.
When they break the laws, they are sent on leave for a bit until things qui­et down. They sell that to the sheep who give them their mon­ey and ore pow­er as a sig­nif­i­cant part of their inves­ti­ga­tions. The real­i­ty is that cops who com­mit crimes get paid leave.

Even when they engage in con­duct that is too egre­gious to ignore, they allow them to resign instead of fir­ing them. But even when they are fired, they sim­ply go to the next town down the road and they are hired and back on the streets in no time.
Complaints of mis­con­duct pile up to dozens and dozens, and instead of fir­ing them, they pro­mote them.
When they kill, they make them cop of the year.
Here is one case in which pros­e­cu­tors ignored a felony pros­e­cu­tion and turned the oth­er way sim­ply because the offend­er wears a uni­form and has a badge.
This makes the pros­e­cu­tors and their offices crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it in the crimes these police offi­cers are committing.

Orange County Pays Out $195K to Teen Threatened at Gunpoint by Off-Duty Sheriff’s Deputy

By Brandon Phở

Two years ago, an off-duty Orange County Sheriff’s deputy pulled his gun on an unarmed South County teen dur­ing a con­fronta­tion at a San Clemente skatepark.

This month, Orange County Supervisors approved a $195,000 set­tle­ment agree­ment with the teen, Max Chance III of San Juan Capistrano, after he sued the coun­ty over neg­li­gence, assault, emo­tion­al dis­tress and civ­il rights vio­la­tions around the incident.

Sheriff offi­cials have since deter­mined the deputy, Michael Thalken, vio­lat­ed depart­ment pol­i­cy through his actions, which includes Thalken yelling “Get on your knees or I will shoot you in the fuck­ing face” as he point­ed a gun at Chance on Oct. 12, 2019.

Yet Thalken remains employed at the depart­ment in a “non-field capac­i­ty,” said Sheriff spokesper­son Carrie Braun in a Wednesday state­ment, adding that unspec­i­fied “dis­ci­pline was issued and served.”

Chance — whose father, Max Chance Jr., hap­pens to be a retired deputy who once super­vised Thalken, accord­ing to attor­neys — was 16 at the time of the incident.

The OC Board of Supervisors approved the set­tle­ment on July 13.

Representing Chance in his law­suit against the coun­ty were father-and-son attor­neys Eric and Connor Traut, the lat­ter of whom is the cur­rent may­or of Buena Park.

I think they need to go over their writ­ten poli­cies again to ensure that peo­ple aren’t sub­ject­ed to this sort of thing again,” said Eric Traut in a Wednesday phone interview.

Traut said his team called in an expert review of OC Sheriff poli­cies “that relate to con­duct of Sheriff’s deputies on and off duty, and this con­duct was pro­hib­it­ed in their own writ­ten poli­cies, so it’s my hope they’ll … ensure this con­duct doesn’t hap­pen again.”

Braun, in an email response to ques­tions about that, said “the Department rou­tine­ly reviews pol­i­cy through brief­ing items for sworn staff” in the jails, courts and field deputies on patrol.

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Chance, in his law­suit, alleges he suf­fered emo­tion­al anguish, as well as post trau­mat­ic stress fol­low­ing the incident.

The teenag­er was at the skatepark with some friends when Thalken walked over from the adja­cent lit­tle league field that night.

The law­suit says Thalken appeared intox­i­cat­ed and angered by the music play­ing from a near­by live band, shout­ing “Where is the tough guy” while anoth­er bystander mim­ic­ked Thalken’s drunk-like walk.

Chance had done noth­ing to insti­gate Thalken besides rais­ing his skate­board and back­ing away in self defense, the law­suit says, when Thalken tried to grab the teenager’s wrist.

That was when Thalken pulled his gun on Chance, cap­tured on video by observers.

Thalken only iden­ti­fied him­self as law enforce­ment once Chance com­plied with his demands to get on his knees, accord­ing to the law­suit, which also alleges that Thalken mis­rep­re­sent­ed what hap­pened when oth­er deputies arrived on scene and when the teen’s father called Thalken and revealed that the teenag­er was his son.

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The law­suit was filed in Orange County Superior Court on March 9.

As part of a set­tle­ment agree­ment like this, you can’t make it con­tin­gent that the deputy is fired,” Traut said. “However, I do hope there is some dis­ci­pli­nary action oth­er than remov­ing him from duty for a short peri­od of time, which they did after this inci­dent and took some lim­it­ed inter­nal steps with him.”

Braun, in the Sheriff’s Dept. state­ment, said Thalken was “imme­di­ate­ly” placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave “while the case was inves­ti­gat­ed and sub­mit­ted to the District Attorney’s office.”

The D.A.’s office under Todd Spitzer ulti­mate­ly opt­ed not to file crim­i­nal charges.