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Thanks to cameraphones, Youtube and blogs, people around the world saw a young transit police officer fatally shoot 22-year-old Oscar Grant III in the back as he laid face down on an Oakland, California subway platform. The shooting, which took place in the early ours of New Years' day, touched off violence-laced protests in a city whose history of troubled police-community relations stretches back decades. While the city considers possible criminal charges against the officer, Grant's family has filed a $25 million wrongful death suit. In the meantime, conversations in the blogosphere raise the hopeful prospect that this time, perhaps, there will at least be greater awareness of the need for police accountability.
In case you don't know the details of this sad story, here's what appears on the various youtube videos. (Because of the graphic nature of these videos, they have been flagged as unsuitable for viewing by minors. Consequently, I'm posting a link here instead of the actual videos, so that you can exercise your own discretion.)
In the early hours of New Years' day, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police responded to a reported disturbance involving two groups of young men.) While subway passengers watched, the officers had several young men sit on the platform. In one of the videos, Grant can be seen raising his open palms. Words are exchanged between the young men and the officers, but what's being said isn't clear. Evantually, three officers pull Grant and force him to lay down on the platform. Grant writhes a bit. One of the officers, Then, one of the officers, Johannes Mehserle, 27 stands and fires a shot into Grant's back. The other officers back away. Mehserle bends down and cuffs the dying Grant behind his back.
Mehserle has since resigned and reportedly, his lawyers are keeping investigators from questioning him about the shooting.
The Baglady is bewildered:
A lot of people including myself are wondering why the officer did what
he did. Apparently in the past there had been two more incidents where
BART police blew away unarmed people, but this is the first time when
citizen reporting with cellphone cameras have brought so much attention
to a BART shooting.
Holly at Feministe wante people to watch the videos:
They made me want to throw up, made me feel dizzy and aching, but
they’re important. If bystanders hadn’t been leaning out of their
trains with cellphone cameras, this incident might have passed largely
unnoticed. According to witnesses, the BART police reacted immediately
by confiscating cameras and phones in the name of “evidence.”
At Hot Air, there's speculation about whether Mehserle meant to grab his taser instead of his gun:
Exit question for our police readers: Have you ever absentmindedly
reached for your taser and grabbed your pistol instead? If so, don’t
they feel sufficiently different in your hand that you’d know instantly?
Adrienne Brown has been thinking deeply about the shooting, the protests and what should come next:
As I write this there are no less than 6 helicopters circling
overhead in downtown Oakland. On the first day of the 10th year since
Amadou Diallo was brutally gunned down by police in New York City,
Oscar Grant was fatally shot in the back by a BART police officer, and
the event was caught on video.As I write this, rumors are flying and media is fanning the riot
flames - car and trash fires, police in riot gear and tanks, restaurant
windows being smashed, tear gas and rubber bullets being used. We won’t
know the full picture till the night is over and the smoke clears, but
the story of the successful nonviolent protest earlier this evening has
been overshadowed by this angry chaos.What is absolutely clear is that folks are furious about the murder
of Oscar Grant, furious that a week has passed with no statement or
acknowledgment of what happened. What is clear is that we currently
don’t have community accountability over our police here in Oakland. In
this bubble of progress we are hampered by the same brutal power
dynamics that plague the rest of the nation. Racially driven policing
that allows the use of lethal weapons in the pursuit of justice is a
failed model.
Les Spence has a list of "Five Immediate Things to Do About Oscar Grant:"
1. Digg the story so that the national media can pick up on it
2. Contact BART Director Carole Ward Allen and demand that 1) the
officers involved be taken off duty without pay and charged and fully
prosecuted; 2) there be an independent investigation of the shooting
that includes a review of training and hiring practices; and 3) BART
establish an independent residents’ review board for
