Vol. 73/No. 3      January 26, 2009

At a news conference January 14 Orloff said, “Murder charges were filed because at this point what I feel the evidence indicates is an unlawful killing done by an intentional act… . When you have a homicide that’s intentional and there’s no mitigation it’s more or less presumed to be a second-degree murder.”

Mehserle was arrested on a fugitive warrant in Nevada, where he had fled. He was returned to California January 14.

Grant, a 22-year-old apprentice butcher from Hayward, was returning home with friends on a BART train after celebrating the New Year in San Francisco. The shooting of Grant, an African American, by Mehserle, who is white, was captured on cell-phone videos by other passengers who were on the train stopped at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland. The videos were posted on the Internet and broadcast on TV news, fueling the anger felt by working people and many youth, especially in Black communities in the Bay Area.

A $25 million claim has been filed on behalf of Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, and Sophia Mesa, his companion and mother of his four-year-old daughter, reported the Oakland Tribune. According to the report, the claim notes that Grant “was unarmed and offered no physical resistance to BART police officers.” The cops had removed Grant, several friends, and others from the train, supposedly to break up a fight.

The claim states that when Grant stepped off the train, “an unnamed Latino officer” threw him against a wall and kneed him in the face. Grant dropped to his knees and put his hands up “in an effort to demonstrate that he was submitting to the Latino officer’s thuggish display of authority.”

The claim reports that Grant “made a valiant effort to de-escalate the situation by appealing to the officer’s sense of humanity by telling the officer that he had a 4-year-old daughter” and asked not to be Tasered.

Grant was forced to the ground, face down. “Without so much as flinching,” the claim continues, “Officer Mehserle stood over Mr. Grant and mercilessly fired his weapon, mortally wounding Mr. Grant with a single gunshot … to the back.”

Nearly 1,000 people attended the funeral for Grant in Hayward on January 7 and hundreds rallied that afternoon at the Fruitvale Station to demand “Justice for Oscar Grant.” The Coalition Against Police Executions (CAPE) called the protest and demanded that “BART call for the criminal prosecution of ALL officers responsible for the death” of Grant.

Following the CAPE rally, self-styled anarchists and other middle-class radicals of various stripes led some of the protesters into nearby streets and lit fires in garbage dumpsters, broke windows at some 300 shops and stores, and set some cars on fire. More than 100 arrests were made by Oakland police, who used tear gas on protesters.

The following morning an overflow crowd of some 200 packed the BART board of directors meeting. Speaker after speaker blasted the board for not responding appropriately to what many called the murder of Grant by Mehserle. The cop resigned from the BART force January 7, after avoiding being interviewed for an entire week.
 
 
Related articles:
Keep up fight to convict killer cop!
Socialist candidate: ‘Prosecute killer cops’  
 
 
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