Cop Shooting in Bay Area Stirs Racial Divide

It happened on New Year's Eve, just three weeks before the Barack Obama Inaugural; a white police officer drew his gun and shot an already arrested and subdued black man dead in Oakland, California.   

 In this time of apparent progress toward a less racially tense society, this is reminiscent of the Rodney King beating back in Los Angeles in 1992 and other more lethel encounters between police and black suspects in Cincinnati, Detroit and other American cities.  One study indicated a black suspect apprehended or detained by police is eight times more likely to be shot and killed than a white suspect.

   The shooting was caught by bystanders on cell phone cameras who were watching the police dealing with a alleged  disturbance involving several young African-American men.   The victim, 22 year-old Oscar Grant (pictured above), a young father,  was surrounded by a passel of BART Transit Cops from  the train platform and was on the ground when killed.

It has since sparked outrage both in public meetings, on the Internet and the mainstream media, and has led to peaceful protests at Oakland City Hall as well as rioting and breaking windows and liting fires by splinter protesters in  downtown Oakland who went more militant after the demonstration ended.    

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, "The unarmed man killed by former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle on an Oakland train platform early New Year's Day put up a brief struggle with officers but had been restrained and had both arms behind him when he was shot in the back, police investigators said."

Mehserle--a two year veteran of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Force--was arrested today, two weeks after the crime,  by the District Attorney in Oakland and Alameda County.  He is being extradited back to California from Nevada.  He faces a murder charge.

  

Although his lawyers have not mounted a defense as yet, the intial reason reportedly given by Mehserle was that he only meant to use his "taser" (or stun gun) on the victim.  Instead, he mistook his automatic pistol for the taser.  The taser weapon issued to BART cops has yellow markings and weighs 8-9 ounces.  The automatic pistol he mistook for the stun gun has no yelllow markings and weighs 22-24 ounces.  

 

Anybody could make a mistake, some might say,but this policeman wasn't trained to be "anybody".  He was trained to be able to use judgement to prevent things like this from happening. He had training for five months in a police academy to know how to react to stress, and he could and should  have been weeded out by his instructors if he failed the psychological battery of tests to determine his stress-coping skills. 

 

 And was not in a life threatening situation: Mehsehle had a suspect on the ground and he was surrounded by fellow officers.  The video tape makes that clear:

 

 

 

Perhaps it is some sign of progress that the man who did the shooting faces murder charges.  But what if this had occured in a less public place than a transit station and no civilian-operated cameras  had been available?  Might this have gone down as a necessary use of force, protected by the old police code of the "Thin Blue Line"?  We will never know, but suffice to say a new Presidential Election result and a new year have not abated old racial tensions for America.