Oscar Grant's mother and her brother.
This is absolutly apauling (if you want you can see the video for yourself, I don’t want to though, but you can find it pretty easily). I will be at the protest today at the Fruitvale Bart station at 3 pm if any other Alas Bay Area folks want to come along.
By now everyone has seen the horrific videos of an Oakland BART police officer shooting an unarmed Black man, Oscar Grant, while he lay face down on the ground and was fully cooperating. The man who was killed execution style was the father of a 4-year-old girl and was considered a peacemaker. In fact moments before he was shot he was pleading with his friends who were all cuffed up to calm down and be cooperative with police. Grant was seen begging the police officers, who had pulled tasers out and pointed them at the heads of his friends, not to shoot…(Read More)
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I am so, so glad that our police are unarmed. When armed police make mistakes, it’s bad – look at de Menezes. When armed police don’t care if they’ve made a mistake, that’s worse.
John Burris has SOLD-OUT the Black and Minority Community
Many people have been calling for FBI (violation of Civil rights) to get involved and Attorney John Burris of Oakland, CA has been playing down the severity of the killing in order to enhance his chances of winning the 33% (maybe 40%) of $25,000,000. Watch his news intereviews from last night playing down federal involvment.
John Burris SOLD-OUT the black community and the Grant family for proper justice. What a disgrace!!!
Demand FBI involvement!!!
They’re very lucky that video exists because otherwise, more people might believe their assertions that the shooting was justified. This reminds me of the U.S. airman who was lying on the ground, obeying a sheriff deputy’s instructions and he still got shot. The deputy was fired but acquitted by trial after the defense attorney scared the jury by saying that if they sent him to prison, who would ever want to be hired as officers to protect them?
I saw this deputy all dressed up walking in the vicinity of the city and county administrative offices for law enforcement agencies and hoped he wasn’t applying for a position at either one.
It’s important to be vigilant and active b/c my city had a similar case like this one 15 years ago and for the first time in history, the department investigating its own own officers put a gag order on the coroner’s report so no one could find out their story of shooting the guy in the chest on his feet was not true and he was lying on his stomach shot in the back. Eventually, through pressure the report was released and there’s certain type of wounds that develop when bullets through a body, collide with a hard surface and reenter the body and they’re very distinctive shaped wounds.
The officer had very little experience and they tried to say he shot his taser by mistake, which is always possible but if he wore one, it’s on the opposite side from his firearm, meaning his nondominant side. He looked too close to do an effect taser shot with the probes. Unless you’re about 3-5 feet away at least, the tasing won’t work.
So in order to tase, he would have to remove the probe cartridge to give a contact tase. Are there any signs that he did that? One expert argued that it was a gun mistaken for a taser because the other officers stepped away to avoid secondary shock (when similar actions have been taken during other shootings of firearms which were not anticipated by other officers) which meant they were close enough for their tasing devices to be useless unless in the contact mode.
Tasers including the X-26 which are the holstered tasers are marked in fluorescent like all less lethal devices resembling firearms are to distinguish between the two. If someone’s firing the taser, they will under most policies yell “tase” or something similar, anything but “shoot”.
I believe the FBI and the DOJ will get themselves involved in this case. It will take public pressure to keep them involved because that’s much harder than getting them involved (which actually is not that difficult). They’ll take a back seat to see what the local prosecutors do. The filing of civil rights violations charges are more stringent than local criminal charges. And hopefully with the new administration, the DOJ and FBI will adopt more proactive practices of involving themselves in problematic police deaths and other alleged misconduct.
This incident is pretty atrocious.
So far, the footage I’ve seen implies that it was some sort of accident. Either the cop was tired and was intending to pull his stun gun instead OR he was intending to pull his gun, but then it “went off.”
And as much as I hate the way it’s being spun (for example: “The man who was killed execution style…” ), the fact remains that, if Grant and his friends had been white, chances are that neither guns nor tasers would have been drawn, which would have kept this totally fucked up situation from happening in the first place.
Of course, if they had been white and the same incident had still occurred, one would question if there would be quite this level of uproar or spin about it being “an execution”.
But, as we’ve seen, these things seem to happen in much greater abundance to people of color. And that alone seems to predicate that the police have a racially-motivated way of doing things that tends to result in PoCs getting wrongfully shot and/or killed.
Part of the problem is: the BART police are not being very transparent about their investigation. Now, arguably, they’re not supposed to be because, hey, it could compromise that investigation. BUT when “unnamed sources in the department” leak info all the damn time to the press when it comes to OTHER CASES, it’s difficult to accept that the BART PD is suddenly lock-step about doing things by the book.
And if this cop doesn’t get found guilty of SOMETHING (most reasonably involuntary manslaughter, though Burris is talking about second-degree murder), there is a distinct possibility of a riot response.
The other part of the problem? Burris is spinning his machine, trying to turn it into the next Rodney King issue because that’s worth lots of money. He’s trying to raise the threat of another riot in an attempt to bully the legal system into helping him win.
But by raising the threat, he’s also helping light the fire.
I have very uncooperative at loading video internet so it was hard to see but it’s hard to seen intent behind what happened. But I saw the backing away a bit by other officers which has been done when they don’t see a shooting coming. I’m not convinced it was to avoid secondary taser shock. But my impression with the tasers is that it looks like they were given them and sent out in the field without training which if BART is POST certified, is a violation of state law and of their certification. If they were close enough with the number of them there to avoid secondary taser shock, then they were in the wrong place if a tasing was happening and as stated, secondary tasing shock wouldn’t have been an issue because if the officer who was close enough to “struggle” with Grant tased him, unless he removed his taser cartridge and shocked him with a contact tase or drive stun then what would happen is he’d fire his taser, the probes would hit Grant right next to each other and fail to produce an arc to deliver the voltage. So why were they shooting probes at him at such a close range, potentially being exposing themselves to secondary taser shock and being ineffective?
And officers are required to undergo taser certification and training at least once every two years after initial training in the device that’s assigned to them and do regular training including drawing their taser (which again is holstered on their nondominant side opposite their firearm which is on the dominant side) to obtain enough muscle memory to avoid making a mistake. The greater danger of taser misidentification is when one officer pulls out a taser (especially the M26 which looks more like a handgun) and other officers mistake it for a gun or the officer yells “shoot” instead of “tase” or something similar to that and other officers start shooting their guns in some form of contagion fire. Taser marks its products in fluorescent to avoid misidentification.
So was it gross negligence in training and procedure that led to this so-called “accidental” tasing turned shooting? Or is it a case where a frustrated officer pulled his firearm and shot? That happens too. The seizing of video cameras and cell phones which happened immediately gives some indication that these officers knew something was done wrong or done criminally.
The delay in interviewing the officer is another issue. One article stated that the officer’s wife had a child and that fostered the delay but normally unless an officer is injured, the interview is done the same day after all the witnesses are interviewed.
Yeah, it was clear just hearing about it that almost certainly the man was going to be Black.
No it wouldn’t have happened. Though just by looking at the video, I wouldn’t be surprised if BART didn’t have a list of sins and improper training and cowboy culture (which often is fed by the huge gap that exists between what training they receive and what they should receive), overall problems and misconduct to some extent would cross racial lines. But not to the same degree.
No there wouldn’t be unless there were some unusual class factors like it was a wealthy White man or woman or a child. And this is largely because Whites don’t protest deaths of other Whites at the hands of police. They sit around for the most part and criticize Black and Latino individuals, leaders and organizations for not doing it for them. Protests of shootings tend to be along racial lines of those who are shot or die in custody. African-Americans protest the deaths of African-Americans, Latinos, Latinos, and Asian-Americans, Asian-Americans. Often it breaks down among ethnic lines (i.e. in my city Laotian-Americans protesting the death of a Laotian-Americans). Sometimes, they cross racial lines and we saw that in my city with Tyisha Miller for example.
There’s really no such thing as a transparent law enforcement agency, certainly not in California.
Of course if the Los Angeles Police Department ever met an investigation of an onduty shooting it didn’t try to manipulate in some way that would be refreshing.
The only thing that makes it seem accidental is how appalling it is. IOW, in order for it not to be accidental, a police officer had to literally make a conscious choice to draw his gun and shoot a compliant, unarmed, civilian, who was lying face down on the ground; he also had to decide to shoot him in the back, in front of a variety of witnesses, some of who were known to be videotaping.
I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that, so i am left with the options that the officer was and still is criminally insane, or that he did not mean to shoot the victim.
However, even if the shooting was accidental as in “he didn’t mean to pull the trigger”, there’s the issue of proximate cause. Accidents don’t happen in a vacuum; they happen because certain circumstances exist. If you create a circumstance where an accident is quite likely to happen, and then the accident happens, it is still your fault even if it was “just an accident.”
So if you don’t pull your gun and point it at someone, you can’t accidentally shoot them. Firearms 101 is ‘don’t point the gun at anything you don’t want to shoot.’ Whether or not the gun was intentionally discharged, if there wasn’t a reason to be drawing and pointing it, then the cop should be charged.
Great point.
I agree. If there’s negligence in involved (and in this case, that’s part of it I think), it’s just as bad.
I was watch the YouTube videos (thanks to Feministe) and it didn’t appear that there was a reason to draw the firearm especially considering the number of officers that were restraining him.
It reminds me of the Chino shooting also caught on video. That was an appalling shooting too although the man survived in that case.
By all means, I agree. Perhaps I did not make that clear enough.
I ESPECIALLY agree when the person creating the circumstance is someone of legal authority.
Another point I was trying to touch on, though, was that these “accidents” seem to occur more often in police interactions with PoCs than with Caucasians. Or at least they get reported on the news more often. I’d love to see a statistic one way or another.
If it’s the former (police accidents happening more often to PoCs), one must ask what it is in the way that police handle situations with non-Caucasians that seems to so radically increase the occurences of these accidents?
Is it in being more careless in these situations? Is it in treating the situation as MORE THREATENING because of skin color, which more often results in weapons being drawn, which then follows to weapons accidentally discharging more often?
Or, gods forbid, is it the paranoiacs wet dream of “they really are out to get the (insert skin color) man!!” ?
I honestly doubt the latter, though I wouldn’t be surprised at the subliminal racism of the former two.
Froth:
That wasn’t even an isolated incident. How many ‘suspected terrorists’ were ever shot due to the Operation Kratos shoot-to-kill policy? Two. How many of those people were completely innocent, unarmed people who were just going about their daily lives? Two. How many of them lived to tell the tale? One.
FFS.
(I don’t know where you live, Froth, but if you’re in the UK then about 20% of the police are armed).
Firearms 101 is ‘don’t point the gun at anything you don’t want to shoot.’
Yes, thank you. I learned this from my father and my grandfather and probably a couple of other people before I even saw Pulp Fiction.
I just heard about this yesterday and I cannot describe the feelings of rage and anger that it left me with. How many young black men must meet their death at the hands of the police for something to be done about these armed thugs? It added even more truth to the documentary I am Sean Bell where young black boys speak about their fear of being executed by the police.
Thene: That’s what I’m saying. When armed police make mistakes it’s an awful lot worse than when unarmed police make mistakes, because unarmed police can’t accidently shoot you.
Yes, I’m in the UK. The vast majority of police I am ever likely to encounter are armed with nothing worse than a baton, including riot police. The only routinely armed forces are the nuclear defence and Ministry of Defence guys. Everyone else has a subgroup of officers trained in firearms, who are sent out when they look to be needed, and aren’t armed for routine work.
In particular, the Transport Police don’t have an armed unit at all. If you get dragged off the Tube and shot, it isn’t the transport police that did it.
Where are you getting 20% from? The figure I’ve heard is that even the Met only trains around 10% of its officers in firearms, and ‘trained’ is certainly a higher figure than ‘armed’.
Yes, that would be my guess.
And I’m likely to think that as well, Sailorman. Especially since it’s supported by the report that the BART police called for back up from Oakland PD because they felt threatened.
And I’m not sure that what we can see in the video footage supports them feeling so threatened. They’re the ones with the guns and handcuffs. Not the other guys.
And, concerning the mentions above of stripping beat cops of their weapons, I’m inclined to agree after something like this. But, more convincing than the arguments are the BART cops that walk around (one is evidenced on the video footage) with a rifle strapped to their chest like they are Marines. That’s a level of brandishment and intimidation that is not warranted anywhere except a war zone…
Mephisto, Oakland is a war zone.
This is not to justify the shooting of Mr. Grant. It is obviously unconscionable to allow public servants to walk the streets with firearms when they are so abominably trained and behaved. But this is one killing. Do you know how many people were shot in the streets in Oakland last year? Hint: they were not shot by the police.
Watched the video. In the most favorable light I can come up with for the cop it was gross negligence and mishandling of a firearm. What he was doing even getting it out is beyond me. Imputing motive and making a judgement as to whether this was accidental or deliberate would involve me reading the cop’s mind, which I’m not currently equipped for. Regardless of motive what we see her is an outrage and a tragedy and the authorities have no business putting people on the streets that are going to do something like this.
As far as the cops jumping back, I can’t say that’s indicative that they knew it was criminal action. Have you ever fired a gun? Let me fire a handgun 18 inches from your leg when you’re not expecting it and you’ll jump out of your pants, nevermind just back a foot.
I don’t agree with disarming police. Plenty of criminals are armed. If I was a cop I wouldn’t go out on patrol without a gun. While disarming cops would stop incidents like this it would also increase incidents of cops getting beaten, wounded or killed and of cops not being able to effectively do something about armed criminals.
Firearms 102 is “Don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to shoot”. The idea is to stop accidental discharges. If you are going to draw a firearm and point it at an unarmed man, you don’t touch the trigger with your finger until/unless they present a deadly threat.
One other thing:
Radfem said:
I’ve been drenched in science and engineering and technology since I could read. Science and technology have been my life. For decades I read about the trends in video and recording and miniturization and how it was going to lead to Big Brother monitoring our every move and ruling our lives. And some of that has panned out.
But what no one predicted was that the confluence of the Internet and video and audio recording and miniaturization would enable the public to monitor and expose Big Brother. And that’s bringing changes, quite salutary ones, that no one predicted. Things that cops, etc., used to be able to cover up are now open to the light of day.
Two problems with that analogy, Alpha.
The first is that you are confusing the bad situation in Oakland with places like Iraq and Afghanistan and spouting siege-mentality metaphors that help cause things like this shooting to happen by reinforcing that thought in others. I think that you cheapen what is happening in all of these places by being so trite.
The second problem is that BART Police are not Oakland Police. They just happened to be in Oakland territory at the time.
I have not seen Oakland police officers brandishing rifles as though they are soldiers pacifying a hostile populace. I have repeatedly seen BART officers do this though, while just on patrol.
You are correct, though, that the homicide rate in Oakland is high compared to other cities in the area. The Chronicle reported 123 homicides in 2008 in Oakland, versus San Francisco’s 98 (97, if you let SFPD reclassify one homicide so that it falls outside their bailiwick).
But part of that difference in numbers is maintained by people’s distrust of police. Specifically, PoCs’ distrust of police. And with the much higher percentage of non-whites in Oakland, and “accidents” like this one happening all the time to PoCs (for another that the news isn’t paying as much attention to: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/08/baseballer.shot/index.html?iref=mpstoryview ), that distrust isn’t going away. And, therefore, neither is the crime.
I don’t agree with disarming police. Plenty of criminals are armed.
We could disarm the criminals too…or at the very least make it more challenging for them to get weapons. But we don’t seem to want to do that…
Here’s a question I have, which could perhaps be addressed by people who know about Taser use.
I know that if you’re going to shock someone with a defillibrator, you must not have anyone else in physical contact with them, lest they get shocked as well (the infamous shout of “clear!” in medical dramas).
Is the same true for stunning someone with a Taser? Because there are clearly other officers in contact with Oscar Grant at the time the officer goes to draw a weapon. If Tasers are under the same restrictions as defillibrators, it would raise questions of whether the officer was really trying to draw a Taser rather than a gun, as has been suggested.
San Francisco – Demonstration Against Police Murder of Oscar Grant
AnnouncementsTonight’s events in Oakland made it clear to everyone that police murders will not go without reprisal. The burning cars and smashed windows of the evening’s conflict showed that the people of the Bay Area will not forget Oscar. The kids know what’s up. We are not interested in passive, impotent and utterly ineffectual displays of disapproval. The Mayor’s calls for calm fell upon deaf ears. We will not remain calm when a young father has been executed by the police, because to them, a passive youth is an easy target. We will not lie down and be shot in the back.
Today we heard the news that Officer Johannes Mehserle resigned from the police force. This is no consolation.
The problem is bigger than Oakland. The relationship between officer and civilian is perverse: an unelected authority enacting an unencumbered power of life and death over a population.
Last month, San Francisco saw a confrontational solidarity action against the murder of a young man on the other side of the world, yet there has been no response to the murder of a young man on the other side of the bay.
On Monday, January 12 at 5pm meet at the Civic Center BART station for a demonstration against the police murder of Oscar Grant.
The young people of Oakland have refused to take this lightly. Let’s show them that they are not alone.
Watch this new BART shooting video, and study the man entering the field of view at 12 seconds in. Look at what is in his right hand (a pistol) and tell me who the individual is. He approaches the police carrying a gun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK1DXQRQ5ZU
Same video …. at 26 seconds the man two people to the right of the armed individual appears to be Grant…. he is not armed. Later they take him down… at 2:56 you can see he is in the same clothes. Does anybody know who the armed individual was who was with OG?
I saw someone in the foreground with an object but I think it was a cell phone or a pager, something smaller than a gun.
I’ve heard similar statements given by witness in some questionable (at least) shootings in my city, including one where it was the officer standing next to the one who shot (after coming from behind a kneeling unarmed man) and firing his weapon. The non-firing officer who actually was doing lower leg strikes with his baton at the time jumped back according to eyewitnesses. Similar case involved two officers suddenly firing at a man inside a crashed car.
Video’s useful b/c sometimes it’s difficult to build a picture from eyewitness testimony. Not so much b/c of lying but different angles, distances, line of views, so some details might differ but when you place witnesses, end up making some sense.
I took some training with a class of officers and one instructor said what was learned from Rodney King. That there are no dark alleys meaning that video can be anywhere. Video taping has had that effect on bringing to light officer misconduct. Sometimes surfacing after someone has been arrested for “resisting arrest” who’s been beaten or after the agency has released some version of a shooting not backed up on video.
Whether an officer can get shocked or not depends on where their hands are in terms of the arc produced by the taser darts. It’s not automatic that if they touch someone getting tased through darts that they’ll get shocked. In fact, some officers move in and handcuff someone who’s being tased b/c during the tasing, the person can’t move. Others don’t because the rigid body posture caused by tasing might make handcuffing difficult.
Tasing a lot of time especially when fired at a distance of more than 10 feet often misses, because both darts have to hit a person at least four inches apart to produce an arc to tase someone. In one of the shootings I mentioned above, an officer was accidently tased by the officer who wound up shooting, with one dart hitting his hand and the other hitting the man who got shot. He got some electric shock but not enough to immobilize him. He got shocked and looked at his hand and saw a taser dart stuck in it. That was probably the highlight of the tactics used in that situation, which were very poor.
It doesn’t look like he reached for a taser for other reasons. An officer’s firearm is going to be on the dominant side. The taser should be on the opposite hip. If an officer is trained properly in the use of both, part of that is practicing drawing a weapon to obtain what’s called “muscle memory” to pull the right weapon. He tugged at the holster b/f the gun came out b/c the holster has attachments to the gun to help avoid another person pulling it out.
Also, he was at way too close range to use a taser with darts. So to utilize a taser, he would have to pull it out of his holster, pull the cartridge and use it to drive stun or contact tase with the prongs. Using it that way, doesn’t immobilize a person. It causes a lot of pain and is usually the method of taser use responsible for most of the abuse and overuse.
That’s why when I read about an officer saying he grabbed for the wrong weapon, I think it sounds like they’re grasping at straws.
It’s not clear whether or not he was equipped or how many officers are. Some did have tasers. They are very expensive at about $800-$1,000 for an X26 model which are most of the holstered tasers. They’re very light, black in color and marked usually in fluorescent yellow. They have ambidextrous safetys switches and microchips to download into computers to determine number of discharges, duration and time of discharge.
I believe he was reaching for his gun. But I did see how he and at least one other officer reacted afterward.
I think we should organize a boycott of BART for the same length of time it takes them to arrest the person they employed to murder Oscar Grant. I would suspect the revenue supports the salaries of the killers they employ. Why would we continue to pay their salary when they are killing innocent citizens? I also believe BART is a government agency so why would we continue to knowingly give money to the same people who are doing nothing to ensure this murderer is locked up.
1. It would be very hard to do given the guns currently available.
2. If police don’t have access to guns it would make it very hard for them to deal with situations where they’re outnumbered.
It would be very hard to do given the guns currently available.
2. If police don’t have access to guns it would make it very hard for them to deal with situations where they’re outnumbered.
1. Guns don’t last forever. One could start with restricting the sale of guns (not banning, but restricting, enforcing strict background checks, etc), encouraging people to give up guns under certain circumstances, etc. Eventually, guns will become rare items and the ownership of one an unusual phenomenon.
2. The police in Britain seem to be able to do it. Not saying that the British model is perfect and should be copied without alteration but it clearly demonstrates that guns are not required for an effective police force.
My initial comment was rather flip but I do realize that one can’t instantly be rid of guns in US society. For one thing, there are situations where individuals might reasonably want guns. Some of my relatives live in rural Texas and occasionally need to shoot rattlesnakes that manage to wander into the house. Hunting is a reasonable use of guns in some circumstances. But they just aren’t suitable for densely populated areas and some effort should be made to keep them away from these situations.
The reason why we have a Second Amendment is not so that people can hunt or use guns for recreation. It’s so that people have an effective means to defend themselves from an armed government, as well as from criminals. That problem doesn’t decrease in an urban environment, it increases. Owning a gun is more appropriate in an urban environment, not less.
Guns don’t last forever.
They do last decades. Keep it oiled and dry and it’ll last century or more.
One could start with restricting the sale of guns (not banning, but restricting, enforcing strict background checks, etc), encouraging people to give up guns under certain circumstances, etc. Eventually, guns will become rare items and the ownership of one an unusual phenomenon.
The Second Amendment limits what can be done in that direction.
The police in Britain seem to be able to do it.
Britain doesn’t have a written Constitution with a Second Amendment.
… the British model … clearly demonstrates that guns are not required for an effective police force.
It doesn’t demonstrate that unarmed police can be effective in a country where the law recognizes that to be truly free the right to keep and bear arms must exist.
The Chronicle reported 123 homicides in 2008 in Oakland
Holy crap! The Chicago papers have run stories about how Chicago is a murder capital now because we had 508 murders in 2008. That represents an increase after it had been trending down in recent years, and there is controversy as to why this should be and to what’s going on in the police department, etc. But on a population basis that’s only 58% of Oakland’s murder rate. By their rate we’d have had 868 murders this year.
I don’t think the 2nd amendment was targeted towards protection from criminals, was it?
Joe, the first sentence in your blockquote is improperly attributed to Dianne – it was my comment that the rest of the block quote is Dianne’s response to.
Why was Oscar Grant being restrained by the police in the first place? The video doesn’t address that.
Hm. Perhaps I was hasty there. Now that I think about it at least it’s main focus was certainly the ability to resist governmental tyranny. I should research it to see what influence the concept of self-defense against non-governmental actors had on it.
The reason why we have a Second Amendment is not so that people can hunt or use guns for recreation. It’s so that people have an effective means to defend themselves from an armed government
Then maybe we should give people the right to own weapons that would be effective against an armed government. Are you going to take out a corrupt, dictatorial US government* with a .22 or even a rifle? I don’t think so. Back to the original intent–legalize rocket launchers!
This may be getting off on a tangent. Should we take it to an open thread?
*Should one come into existence. Currently, in the US, your best defense against a government that you d0n’t like is voting and related non-violent political activities.
The Wikipedia entry for the recent District of Columbia v. Heller case says, in part:
Now, that’s some Wiki contributor’s interpretation, not the actual text of the decision. But on the face of it it would appear that the Supremes think that the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense is part of the 2nd Amendment. I’ll look into that and see if that’s actually true and why the Supremes said that.
Dianne, just FYI the M-16 rifle (standard US Military issue) is only .22 caliber, though a different round.
We are getting off onto a tangent to some extent. But this all opened up with quite a bit of discussion on the government feels free to misuse arms against certain groups of people. So I’ll limit the rest of this comment to the specific situation of Oscar Grant.
Why did the cops restrain Oscar in this fashion? Would they have done so if Oscar had been legally and openly carrying a weapon?
I’m looking at this not from the viewpoint of government/patrichary/capitalism oppressing a powerless group but as an individual example of government tyranny. The 2nd Amendment was designed at least in part to permit the populace to resist government tyranny. Would the cops have felt free to restrain Oscar (and apparently others) in this fashion for what quite possibly was no good reason? Or would they have been a lot more polite and resolved the issue in a much less aggressive and much more respectful fashion if Oscar and his friends had been armed?
Tell that to Oscar. Or his family.
Certainly the best long-term defense is the vote, demonstrations, etc. That’s far preferable to civil war. But while that should in the end reduce or (in an ideal world, which we don’t live in) eliminate such a thing from happening, we see here that they are of no use at a particular point in time when it DOES happen. The idea of the Constitution is to ensure that the Government can’t interfere with individual rights, not just group ones.
I think they were detaining passengers on a train and witnesses said he was trying to deescalate which meant he was talking with the officers. That can be enough to be thrown on the ground and restrained by officers accused of “obstruction” usually. Whether or not that was the case is not clear on the video. The officers had other people sitting on the ground. One officer put his baton away on his belt I think on the longer video about three seconds after the shooting but he wasn’t around Grant. And in most force policies, a baton is just below using a gun.
The murder rate in Oakland is very high but incidents like these aren’t going to lower it. In many homicide cases, it’s important to have witness statements and public input to solve them. I talked with two women yesterday who lost a teenaged male relative to a shooting (which killed two young men) before the holidays and the trail’s “cold” because no one will say anything in fear of gang retaliation and distrust of police.
It might have helped if they were White. Sounds cliche but it’s true. I know for one thing that a similar incident in my city which fortunately didn’t end in a shooting but shared similar elements wouldn’t have happened if that individual had been White. As it turns out if they knew he was a law enforcement officer with another agency, that might have offered some protection b/c they released him from lying on the ground at gunpoint on his stomach, once they realized he was a police officer. What was his crime? Sitting on the front wall of his own property in an affluent neighborhood talking with a Black female Bible salesman. And this incident could have led to a fatal shooting based on the accounts of the officer’s behavior when he arrived which was antagonistic right away, not less aggressive and more respectful like you mention. And what you stated, is a very important point in how people should be treated. But police don’t do that in situations which don’t only merit it but where it might be much more effective than how they do behave.
If they were dressed “nicely” or had money (which may be detrimental for African-Americans as far as police are concerned) so there are other factors. But even affluent African-Americans have problems with police officers not thnking they “belong” in their own neighborhoods, on their own streets and in their own yards. Usually the words that they use is that the person doesn’t *look* like they belong in that street/neighborhood and so forth. If an officer comes on strong with that assumption, even with proof, it’s still very difficult especially when they make it very difficult for you to feel safe to even take your hands off the steering wheel (and even many young African-Americans are instructed by parents and others to always put their hands on the steering wheel where they are visible when stopped by police).
Whether or not they had a reason is something the video doesn’t show, but even if the restraint were reasonable (as some have used to defend the shooting in other places), that doesn’t make the force used to restrain reasonable or the shooting reasonable. And the use of the word “reasonable” is very critical because under the penal code in California, it’s the standard for determining whether an officer-involved shooting is justifiable homicide or illegal use of force (i.e. murder, manslaughter, reckless discharge of a firearm and so on).
Tell that to Oscar. Or his family.
I’m not sure how having a gun would have helped Oscar. He probably wouldn’t have been carrying it in the first place: he was just riding the subway, not expecting trouble. Even if he had been carrying it, he wouldn’t have had it out when he was lying on his face, trying to show that he was cooperating with the police and pleading with his friends to cooperate. So how would his having a gun have done anything other than given the police a better excuse for the shooting? If the police had reason to expect that the vast majority of people riding BART would NOT be armed, they might have been less trigger happy. (Or not: hard to make any sense of this shooting.)
In fact, I do think that the political/legislative route is the best way for Mr. Grant’s family to obtain some measure of justice. Unless they want to go shoot the police personnel involved (or any others potentially responsible: the commissioner, the mayor, etc.), what good would a gun do them? Really, there is no way for them to truly obtain justice: Oscar Grant is dead and nothing will change that. Not shooting the person responsible. Not making the department or city pay. Not any social or political change. But making a fuss about this incident and bringing about changes in the way Oakland and/or BART trains their police and how they encourage them to behave (i.e. go for your gun at the most remote threat or try for less violent means of subduing suspects) and so on can help prevent similar tragedies in the future. How would more guns prevent such tragedies from occuring?
Is that a joke?
If Oscar and friends had been armed, then given what happened my guess is that a) more than one of them would be dead; b) the police would be mounting a much stronger defense; c) there would be much less confidence in a jury verdict, and d) the officer would be being defended as having done the right thing to protect his safety. If one of them just wiggled he’d have been ‘reaching for a weapon.’
People with guns are so much more dangerous than people without guns, that the cops react very differently to them in a confrontation. Triply so if they’re POC and male
The murder rate in Oakland is very high but incidents like these aren’t going to lower it.
Indeed. In fact, these sorts of incidents might well raise the murder rate. Who is more likely to go to the police to report, for example, an out of control family member, friend, or neighbor who has started acting violently (being abusive, vandalizing the neighborhood while mumbling about how s/he was going to “get them all”, etc) but has not yet escalated to murder: a person who feels reasonably sure that the police will help them if they go to them or one who just wants to stay as far away from the police as possible under any circumstances because they are afraid of getting shot if they so much as nod politely to a member of the police?
The officer who shot Oscar Grant has resigned. He had refused to appear which in most LE agencies is ground for termination. So the officer clearly knows he’s at least violated departmental policy for use of lethal force and was looking at potential termination down the road. Any rights he had to appeal any removal were lost when he resigned his position.
The D.A. said he will announce within days if the officer will be charged with criminal offenses.
The murder rate in Oakland is very high but incidents like these aren’t going to lower it.
And relations between citizens and police are terrible, and only going to get worse– the San Jose paper ran an article today talking about long-standing bad blood between Oakland residents and law enforcement. I hope Mehserle is charged and jailed soon. I don’t especially want a rogue cop running around the city with nothing to lose.
Even if he had been carrying it, he wouldn’t have had it out when he was lying on his face
My point being that maybe if he’d been armed he wouldn’t have been laying on his face in the first place.
Unless they want to go shoot the police personnel involved (or any others potentially responsible: the commissioner, the mayor, etc.), what good would a gun do them? Really, there is no way for them to truly obtain justice: Oscar Grant is dead and nothing will change that. Not shooting the person responsible.
You miss my point, Dianne. The idea isn’t revenge shooting. You’re right; at that point it’s too late. The idea is to not get to that point in the first place.
Ron, is it your claim that a black person with a visible gun is less likely to be shot by police than a black person without a gun?
That seems to be what you’re arguing. But — with all due respect — it seems so far removed from reality that I keep on thinking that you must not mean that.
The idea is to not get to that point in the first place.
I second Amp’s confusion on this issue. I can see situations in which having a gun might be useful for self defense. If someone is at your house, pounding on your door, and threatening to kill you, for example (as mentioned in an analogy on another thread.) Or if you’re facing a hungry grizzly bear. But I can’t see any point at which a gun would be anything other than less than useless in this case. I’m reasonably sure you aren’t suggesting that people start waving guns at police officers. But what are you suggesting? How could having a gun have helped Mr. Grant?
It didn’t help Kathryn Johnson, who was Black, 92 and shot once at what she thought were criminals breaking into her house but were actually corrupt Atlanta Police Department narcotics officers entering on a warrant that they had lied to a judge to get signed. They shot at her over 30 times, hitting her at least six. Their initial argument was that they shot after she shot at them. They had been wounded but by their own bullets, not her lone one which wound up in the eave above her front door.
Two months earlier, Frances Thompson, Black and 80-years-old aimed a starters’ pistol at narcotics officers from the same department who broke on her house on a warrant they got signed after one day of watching Black people carrying packages to and from her house. It turned out her son had died and they were bringing food after the funeral.
If Grant had a gun, he’d be shot faster and his gun would be held up at the police chief at a press conference calling it a justifiable homicide.
One major problem with gun possession is that White men and Black men just aren’t viewed the same, even by many members of the NRA. They gave police officers a test during racial diversity training which depicted a Black man holding a gun on a White man and a White man holding a gun on a Black man and they were asked to guess what the situation was. The majority of the officers said the first was a Black man robbing a White man and the second, was a police officer apprehending a Black man. That’s what often gets taken out into the field.
I may be wrong, but I think RonF is suggesting that police who are afraid of a populace are less likely to attack that populace.
But the problem here is that the evidence runs counter to that. What we’re seeing is that police are approaching interactions with black males as though they are afraid that the black males really are going to pull a weapon at any time. And this sort of abominable situation is what results from that fear. Police treat even unarmed black males as though they are all gat-swinging gang-bangers on a rampage… and then shoot them.
As to the discussion above regarding whether the officer intended to use a taser or not… My theory (unfounded though it may be) is that the officer was pulling his gun for intimidation factor. He was trying to get the suspect to “settle down” through the threat of violence (as opposed to the procedurally accepted format of tasing the guy and cuffing him). And the gun went off in his hand.
The problem is that numerous officers seem to approach the civilian population in this fashion. They make threats about jailing you, shooting you, throwing you down the stairs and pretending that it was your fault for “struggling.” And their fellow officers, even the otherwise good ones, back their play, cover their asses, and fail to report their “brethren in blue.”
Because “everyone hates a rat.” Which only makes sense if the actions that the officers are afraid of being ratted on are, in fact, illegal.
Police departments need to stop acting like they are a gang or a mafia.
Before I get into this, I’d like a question I’ve asked above answered – why was Mr. Grant face down on the ground with 3 cops on top of him in the first place? What happened before the video that we’ve all been looking at started?
Er, just in case anyone misread this… when i said
The “triply so” was meant to apply to the cops’ reactions, not to the actual dangerousness level. Obviously, being a male POC doesn’t automatically make you more dangerous, but it often means that you will be perceived as such by the cops.
I hope I didn’t misle anyone.
Don’t know why he was on the ground face down. I would guess that it could be similar to what other train passengers said that he was trying to intervene with the detention of other passengers to de-escalate (which isn’t going to happen) and the police felt threatened by a Black man in their faces and so they used force on him to “detain” him with the argument that he was obstructing and delaying officers in the performances of their duties, which is a misdemeanor.
Which gives them the excuse to rough him up a bit. They’ll write on their reports, “He stood with a rigid posture and appeared combative, balling his fists.” I’ve read quite a few reports on incidents where people were roughed up for “resisting” that curiously enough, didn’t proceed very far in the judicial system. That statement was just dusted off and used recently on a racial profiling incident involving a police sergeant forced on the ground at gunpoint after being threatened with tasing.
I’ve seen it happen.
One video showed him getting punched in the face by an officer, but it was the one who was restraining him, not the one who shot him. One officer put a knee on his back or higher than that, a restraint method that encourages people underneath the knee to struggle. Which causes more force to be used.
I read a discussion on it on a LE site and they’re all hanging their hat on the mistaken taser argument which I have problems with for reasons I explained here, the first of which is not even knowing if he was equipped with a taser. They’re expensive, the agency probably doesn’t have a huge budget so it’s not a given every officer would have one. It’s not given that they are equipped with X26 tasers, the “lighter” ones. But it’s hopeful that if they were assigned them, they’d be properly trained in the dual usage of tasers to know that close range firing of probes isn’t going to do anything. Yet there’s no signs that the officer even tried to pull the cartridge off to do the contact tase which at that point, he would have known for sure what he had in his hands if he grabbed the wrong weapon.
I don’t think he did. He grabbed his gun, he tugged several seconds b/c it was fastened in his holster to prevent it from being grabbed by somone else.
radfem, if you don’t buy the mistake argument, are you in the “cold blooded murder” camp or do you see another alternative?
I’m certainly not trying to excuse the cop. As I said before (#9), even if it was a “mistake” (note the scare quotes) the guy is still at fault. But I don’t really see much of a middle ground between “mistake” on the one hand and “coldblooded intentional murder” on the other. Do you?
I’m in the undecided camp, though it’s a bad shooting for sure. Is it cold-blooded? Well, it’s out in public, 3 p.m., lots of witnesses and the officer did look surprised when he stood up and put his hands on his head afterward. But then in my city, an officer did a shooting that was about as cold-blooded as any I’ve heard of and it was in front of at least 20 people. When a witness called me on that one two hours after it happened, I was shocked. Then there was the faux account by the department, then the truth came out nine months later, so the fact that it was done in front of witnesses doesn’t mean it was impossible, but I’m not sure that was the case. There’s elements of it that suggest it’s possible and some that don’t indicate it.
Was it accidental? I’m skeptical of the taser argument based on what I know about tasers which is not from having one and deploying it out in the field, granted but for auditing two training sessions (and I’m the woman of a 100 questions) and researching Taser, Inc.
There was one case cited from 2006 but I think it’s more likely that Again, one in my city where it’s somewhat possible that an officer fired at a man who allegedly took his taser (after the officer dropped it) mistaking the taser for a gun. Tasers are holstered on the opposite hip, are marked in fluorescent orange or yellow depending on the model and are in the case of the X26, lighter than handguns. The officer was too close to get a discharge of electricity from the probes from where he stood, yet there’s no indication he tried to remove a cartridge which he would probably have done if properly trained in taser use and if it were a mistake.
We don’t even know if the guy even had a taser. Because others did at the scene, doesn’t mean that he did. They’re $800-1,000 for the X26 and Advanced M26 and relatively few agencies equip all their officers. My city equips about 52% of field officers as of 2007 and are almost evenly divided between the two most popular models.
X26 taser
Advanced M26 taser
Accidental discharges, is another listed possibility. That’s possible but you can’t see the firearm well enough to determine whether it’s a Glock, S&W or a Baretta, the three most common guns used by LE in California. Depending on the firearm, there’s different pressures that have to be applied to be fired which maybe greater for the first shot fired (and only one shot was fired here, not a 2-3 shot volley, for example). But from what people have said, accidental discharges are rare and the officer drew his gun which under most police departmental policies in the state rates as high a level of force as discharging it. You don’t pull it out unless you’re prepared to use lethal force. Does it mean officers always do? No, but the intent is to be ready to do so.
After watching the behavior of some of the officers on the other videos, I think some of them came on a bit strong with the force, especially with Grant and there’s not any reason provided as of yet even by the department why that was. It could have been officers with the wrong attitude who were using force even when not necessary (like shoving people who aren’t really doing anything which was on one video and then one officer was shown putting away his asp baton three seconds after the shooting). And maybe this officer who had less than two years experience (which means we don’t even know if he was probational or not), took it too far. He and his two cohorts who were on Grant were roughing him up and whether the officer meant to keep it to that level or to take it up and kill him, is a question.
I’m not sure it’s accidental and I’m not sure it’s cold-blooded murder but these are two different explanations with a whole lot of ground between them and maybe what actually happened is somewhere there.
I think an example of what might fall in between is the Elio Carrion shooting.
In case you haven’t read, the former BART officer who shot Oscar Grant has been arrested and likely will face criminal charges in relation to the shooting.
Great! Do you know what he’s being charged with?
No, though I’m guessing it’s a murder warrant.
This is what we have courts for. To sort out stuff like this. They have the guy in custody now, so they’ll go forward according to the process.
Are courts always right? Not by a long shot. Injustices are done every day. For example, I think, on the basis of nothing much, that OJ Simpson murdered his wife. A court, however, thought otherwise, and I’m willing, though not eager, to live with that.
Anyone who has a better way to resolve disputed facts is implored, by me at least, to come forward ASAP and explain this idea. Hint: trial by newspaper, by internet video, by opinion of demonstrators, or by opinion poll of the general population, are not viable candidates, for reasons too numerous and too obvious to take up electronics to explain.
Let’s wait and let the process take its course. Unless, of course, as I averred, you have a better way to do this.
(If you think the courts are corrupt, you are urged to get involved in the political process to rectify this situation.)
Protesters to disrupt service today at Oakland BART Fruitvale Station
Protesters plan to disrupt service today at the BART Fruitvale Station where Oscar Grant III was shot to death by a BART officer the morning of Jan. 1.
Protest organizers announced last week that they will shut down the station during rush hour today unless officials met their ultimatum for increased accountability and other demands.
The Oakland Police Department is prepared to backup BART if necessary.
“We’ll have a contingent of officers on standby,” OPD spokesman Jeff Thomason said. “BART Police Department will handle anything within the station and on BART property. If it gets out of control BART can call for assistance. … If the protest will moves to the streets, we will have enough to officers on hand to deal with any situation on the streets.”
Thomason said that the department does not want to impede on the protesters’ First Amendment rights, but “if acts of violence occur … then we are going to take action.”