Outrage in Oakland After Cop Kills Unarmed Man: Piecing Together the Story

By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet. Posted January 14, 2009.

Wow. I was in shock … I cannot believe that in a couple of seconds you just draw your gun out and shoot somebody who’s just lying on the floor with his hands behind his back.

Following the shooting, BART police tried to confiscate all the videos taken by witnesses. They failed. Three clips videos made it onto YouTube, where they were viewed hundreds of thousands of times and eventually picked up and played on the news, bringing the story to national attention.

As Valleywag notes, without those videos, the story would have quickly faded from public attention -- "Another death by cop in America's inner cities, rendered in bloodless black-and-white text, would go unremarked by readers. But the video, which shows Mehserle, seemingly unprompted, reaching for his gun and shooting Grant, is chilling."

Rumors have circulated that Mehserle mistook his gun for a Taser and shot Grant by accident. But experts claim the scenario is unlikely.

The Associated Press reports:

George Kirkham, a professor of criminology at the Florida State University who also viewed the footage, said he finds that hard to believe because most Taser stun guns do not look or feel like pistols, and the officer fired in a manner consistent with a handgun, not a Taser.

"It's not believable that any officer can mix up a Taser and a firearm," said Kirkham, who has examined almost 500 police shootings over the past 30 years. "It's like looking for your steering wheel on the right side of your car rather than the left side."

Despite ample evidence of wrongdoing, officials did not press criminal charges against Mehserle, who resigned from the BART police and refused to be questioned by BART officials. 

The glacial pace of the investigation has infuriated many in the community. Last Wednesday, a peaceful protest starting at the Fruitvale station where Grant was shot, boiled over into vandalism and destruction as some protesters set trash cans and cars on fire and smashed store windows. More than 100 people were arrested.

At CounterPunch, Kara N. Tina describes the protest:

As the march reached the Lake Merritt BART Station and headquarters of BART police downtown, clashes immediately broke out, leaving one police cruiser destroyed alongside a burning dumpster. Marchers dispersed down side streets to the sounds of police weapons discharging and the sting of tear gas in the air. … Hundreds of businesses and cars were damaged or destroyed, and dumpsters were left burning. The next day, a BART board of directors meeting was filled beyond capacity and overwhelmed with community members expressing indignant rage, clearly feeling validated and empowered to speak up by the previous night's rebellion.

But some residents were angered that protesters targeted local businesses and landmarks. Officials claim that more than 300 businesses were vandalized.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that at one point the protesters:

... smashed a hair salon, a pharmacy and several restaurants. Police in riot gear tried to control the crowd, but some people retreated along 14th Street and bashed cars along the way. The mob smashed the windows at Creative African Braids on 14th Street, and a woman walked out of the shop holding a baby in her arms.

"This is our business," shouted Leemu Topka, the black owner of the salon she started four years ago. "This is our shop. This is what you call a protest?"

Some witnesses claim that the protests became violent at the behest of outsiders -- mostly white anarchists who do not live in Oakland. In indybay.org, an anonymous poster writes:

When the masked young people (who, in their great majority, were white kids) started burning the first garbage dumpster near Laney College, about half the black folks in the crowd said, "Aw fuck this! I'm outta here! I ain't getting caught up in the middle of that, those cops'll be shooting soon!" and left.

See more stories tagged with: african americans, protests, police violence, shooting, oakland, oscar grant, bart, johannes mehserle

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