http://m.ustream.tv/recorded/47279477?rmalang=en_US

This video shows a man named AJ Redkey being arrested by six undercover members of the Fullerton Police Department in Pasadena this afternoon. AJ must be a pretty dangerous character to have that many officers dedicated to his apprehension, right? Must have committed some egregious offense to have so many resources directed his way…

No. AJ was reportedly arrested for failing to disperse from a protest following the verdicts rendered in the trial of two Fullerton Police Officers charged in the death of Kelly Thomas. AJ was not arrested on January 18*, when the protest took place, although about a dozen others were that day. Instead, AJ was reportedly sent a summons for failure to disperse from the January protest, over three months later.

And now, on May 7, six undercover officers were sent to apprehend AJ in Pasadena, because there evidently weren’t any more pressing law enforcement priorities in Fullerton today.

An officer in the tape confirms that the charge against AJ is a misdemeanor, and that he can be bailed out at the Fullerton jail. However, we have been told that AJ has been moved to the county jail in Santa Ana.

Unless there is more to this story than we now know, unless AJ is somehow involved in some other crime than a non-violent misdemeanor, itself questionable, then one has to conclude that sending six Fullerton police officers 35 miles away to arrest him represents a serious waste of police resources, along with belatedly pressing such a charge in the first place.

*The date of the Fullerton protest was erroneously identified as January 19 in an earlier version of this blog post.

UPDATE: The OC Weekly’s Gabriel San Román has expanded on this story

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2014/05/anaheim_james_fullerton.php