Then-Fullerton police Officer Joe Wolfe instigated "as much as anyone else" the fatal beating of a mentally ill homeless man last summer, a retired police chief told the Orange County grand jury, according to transcripts released Thursday.

Wolfe talked to Kelly Thomas with scorn and then accelerated an already-heated encounter into a deadly beating when he struck the first blow, Joseph McNamara, a former chief in Kansas City, Mo., and San Jose, testified. McNamara, an expert on police use of force, said Wolfe and then-Officer Manuel Ramos coerced and threatened Thomas "behind the power of their uniform, their clubs and their badge and their guns with total disrespect," according to the transcripts. (MORE)