Trial Proceeds in Police Shooting of Oakland Youth
Even in Oakland, Calif., where police are notorious for their brutality and duplicity, Oscar Grant’s death was remarkable. Last January, Grant — a 22-year-old black man — was handcuffed, forced face down on a subway platform under a police officer’s knee and shot by an officer in the back. Videos of the incident spawned weeks of protests by a community fed up with abusive police practices.
“Looking at it, I hate to say this, it looks like an execution to me,” Roy Bedard, who has trained police officers around the world, told the San Francisco Chronicle in the wake of Grant’s shooting. “It really looks bad for the officer.”
This week, the trial of Officer Johannes Mehserle continues. Mehserle — who’s white — is being tried for murder charges in Los Angeles, where his defense counsel moved the trial (fearing that an Oakland jury would be biased by local coverage and protests following Grant’s death).
Evidence, including several videos taken by onlookers, clearly establishes that Mehserle shot and killed Grant. Mehserle’s attorneys, however, are arguing that Grant was resisting arrest (though handcuffed and under the knee of another officer.) Mehersle’s counsel are also telling the jury that he intended to use his Taser and accidentally drew and fired his gun.
Even if Grant was resisting arrest, though — a fact that remains under dispute — two serious questions will hamper Mehserle’s defense.
First, Mehserle claims that he confused his firearm for the Tasers which he and other Bay Area police officers had been trained to use four months earlier. According to an independent expert, however, confusing one’s firearm for their Taser is “as reflexive as you getting in on … the passenger side [of your car] if you want to drive it.” Likewise, Florida criminologist and consultant Goerge Kirkham concludes, “There’s no remote similarity to a conventional firearm….The Taser is just like apples and oranges.”
The second issue hounding Mehserle’s counsel is the question of whether use of a Taser would have been appropriate in the first place. Before he was shot and killed, Grant was in handcuffs. He was forced onto his stomach by police. One officer appears to have had his knee on the back of Grant’s neck or upper back. What threat could the young man have posed?
It’s a familiar story: white police tried for excessive use of force against a black man in a Los Angeles courtroom. As a recent resident of Oakland, I’m hopeful that the outcome from Mehserle’s trial won’t spark the same kinds of riots we saw in April 1992.