Killing of Oscar Grant
Oscar Grant was a 22-year-old black man who was killed in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009 by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California. Responding to reports of a fight on a crowded Bay Area Rapid Transit train returning from San Francisco, BART Police officers detained Grant and several other passengers on the platform at the Fruitvale BART Station. BART officer Anthony Pirone kneed Grant in the head and forced Grant to lie face down on the platform. Officer Johannes Mehserle drew his pistol and shot Grant. Grant was rushed to Highland Hospital in Oakland and pronounced dead later that day. The events were captured on bystanders' mobile phones. Owners would then upload the footage to YouTube. Both protests and riots took place in the following days.
On January 30, 2010, Alameda County prosecutors charged Mehserle with second-degree murder in their indictment for the shooting. Mehserle resigned from his position and pleaded not guilty. The trial began on June 10, 2010. On July 8, 2010, Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and not guilty of the murder charge.
Though initial protests on July 8, 2010, against the jury verdict were peacefully organized, after dark there were incidents of looting, arson, destruction of property, and small riots. Nearly 80 people were eventually arrested. On November 5, 2010, Mehserle was sentenced to two years, minus time served. He served his time in Los Angeles County Jail protective custody, held in a private cell for his safety. On June 13, 2011, Mehserle was released under parole after serving 11 months. Following a 2012 failed appeal of his conviction, Mehserle changed his name and his profession.
Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris filed a $25,000,000.00 wrongful death claim against BART on behalf of Grant's family. BART settled with Grant's daughter and mother for a total of $2,800,000.00 in 2011. It also settled with several of Grant's friends who had sued for damages because of police brutality. A separate suit by Grant's father did not result in a jury award, as it was decided that due to his imprisonment he was not sufficiently involved in Grant's life.
The killing, and the protests against it, were an important precursor to the Black Lives Matter movement, which began in 2013. The biographical drama film Fruitvale Station, written and directed by Ryan Coogler, portrays the last 24 hours of Grant's life, his killing, and the immediate aftermath.
Involved parties
Oscar Adonis Grant III
Oscar Juliuss Grant III lived in Hayward, California. He worked as a meat cutter at Farmer Joe's Marketplace in Oakland's Dimond District after jobs at several Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets. He had attended both San Lorenzo and Mount Eden high schools in San Lorenzo and Hayward, respectively, until the 10th grade and eventually earned his GED. Grant was on parole at the time of his death, having been released from prison following a sixteen-month sentence for gun possession.Grant's funeral was held at the Palma Ceia Baptist Church in Hayward on January 7, 2009. Grant's mother, sister, daughter, and girlfriend filed a wrongful death claim against BART following his death. It was settled in 2011.
Johannes Mehserle
Johannes Sebastian Mehserle was raised in the Bay Area. Mehserle graduated from New Technology High School in Napa, California.Mehserle joined the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police in March 2007.
Incident
Oscar Grant had been celebrating with his friends at The Embarcadero in San Francisco on New Year's Eve. He and about eight friends returned to the East Bay in the lead car of a BART train bound for Fruitvale, a station in Oakland. BART offered extended service and a special "Flash Pass" for the New Year's Eve holiday.At approximately 2:00 a.m. PDT, BART Police responded to reports of a physical altercation involving up to 20 people on an incoming train from the West Oakland BART Station; the participants were described as "hammered and stoned".
BART Officers Tony Pirone and Marysol Domenici were the first officers to arrive at the scene. The officers removed Grant and several other men suspected of fighting from the train and detained them on the platform. Pirone handcuffed Grant's friend, angering other riders. Pirone lined up Grant and two other men against the wall.
When five other officers, including Johannes Mehserle and his partner Woffinden, arrived at the Fruitvale station, they found the situation "chaotic", according to their accounts.
BART Officer Marysol Domenici was the first officer on the scene along with her partner, Tony Pirone. They tried to take control of passengers coming off the train. Domenici testified at the BART incident hearing that Grant and his friends swore at her and did not obey her orders. She is quoted as having testified that: "If they would've followed orders, this wouldn't have happened. They probably would've just been cited and released." A subsequent internal investigation conducted by an outside law firm retained by BART found that Pirone lied when he claimed to have confirmed with the train operator that the men the BART police detained on the platform were involved in the reported train fight. The train operator recalled informing Pirone that she was unsure whether those detained had been involved in the fight.
A cell phone video broadcast on local television station KTVU on January 23 showed what appeared to be Pirone rushing towards one of the detained men and punching him in the face multiple times, two minutes before the shooting occurred. Grant's family alleges in their civil claim against BART that an officer threw Grant against a wall and kneed him in the face. The internal investigation report found that Pirone struck Grant in the head and kneed him, likely causing injuries documented in his autopsy, including head fractures and a hematoma. Until the report became public in May 2019, Pirone's attorney had maintained that Grant provoked Pirone by trying to knee the officer in the groin and by hitting Domenici's arm when she tried to handcuff one of Grant's friends.
Witnesses testified that Pirone was the aggressor during the incident. An attorney for Grant's family, John Burris, also disputed Pirone's account, saying that Grant and his friends were "peaceful" when the train stopped. Grant raised his hands while seated against the platform wall. Additional footage from a cell phone was presented in court showing Pirone standing over the prone Grant before the shooting and yelling: "Bitch-ass nigger, right?" Pirone and his attorney say he was repeating an insulting epithet that Grant had yelled at him.
While dozens of people from the stopped train shouted and cursed at officers, Mehserle and Pirone positioned Grant face-down. According to Pirone, Grant was disobeying instructions and cursing at officers. Witnesses said that Grant pleaded with BART police not to shock him with a taser. Pirone knelt on Grant's neck and told him that he was under arrest for resisting an officer.
Mehserle tried to handcuff Grant but could not reach his hands. He stood up, unholstered his gun, a SIG Sauer P226, and fired a shot into Grant's back. Immediately after the shooting, Mehserle appeared surprised and raised his hands to his face. Several witnesses say Mehserle said "Oh my God!" several times after the shooting. The.40 caliber bullet from Mehserle's semi-automatic handgun entered Grant's back, exited through his front side and ricocheted off the concrete platform, puncturing his lung. According to one witness, Grant yelled, "You shot me! I got a four-year-old daughter!" Grant died seven hours later, at 9:13a.m., at Highland Hospital in Oakland.
Initially, there were rumors that Grant was handcuffed before he was killed. However, court filings by the district attorney's office state that Grant's hands were behind his back and that he was "restrained and unarmed", but do not say that he was handcuffed. Mehserle said he feared that Grant was "going for his waistband" and a gun. The day after the shooting, BART spokesman Jim Allison said that Grant was not restrained when he was shot, and multiple witnesses testified that Grant refused to give up his hands for handcuffing prior to the shooting. The family's claim against BART stated that Grant was handcuffed only after he was shot.
Video evidence
of the shooting was documented by video cameras held by passengers on the train idling next to the platform, as police detained Grant and a number of other men suspected of being involved in the disturbance. Several witnesses testified during the preliminary hearing for Mehserle's trial that they began recording because they believed BART officers were acting too aggressively. They gave the videos to television news, which broadcast them; others posted videos on the internet.Oakland attorney John Burris, who represented the family in their suit against BART over Grant's death, said BART confiscated numerous cell phone images that he believed contain additional evidence of the killing. Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff said video confiscated by BART was useful in bringing the murder charge against Mehserle. Witnesses at the scene said police attempted to confiscate cameras. These claims were never acknowledged by BART police.
Orloff, the district attorney, said that several passenger videos that had not been made public were "very helpful" in the investigation.
On January 2, KTVU aired a video by an anonymous passenger who submitted a cell phone video of the shooting. On January 23, KTVU aired a cell-phone video which appeared to show a second officer punching Grant in the face prior to the shooting. In late February, KRON 4 aired a clip of a video showing a different angle of this altercation.
BART spokesperson Linton Johnson described the surveillance footage from the Fruitvale platform cameras as "benign". He said the platform cameras had recorded some of the incident, but footage did not include the shooting.
Frank Borelli, a retired police officer and writer, said that the scene as shown in the video moments before the shooting would be as important to understanding what happened as the shooting itself. "The four officers have to be operating under a high level of stress given the relatively confined setting and the people on the BART train who are expressing, in a very loud vocal fashion, their displeasure with the officers' actions. Those officers, should things go bad for them, are vastly outnumbered by a group of people who have already voiced their unhappiness with the police."
After viewing the shooting from multiple angles, police use-of-force expert Roy Bedard, who initially said he thought the shooting was an accident, changed his mind. He said: "I hate to say this, it looks like an execution to me" and "It really looks bad for the officer." University of San Francisco law professor Robert Talbot said the videos could support a claim of an accidental shooting: "Nothing about his body looks murderous."