Cops Execute 22 Year Old Man On Train Platform
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http://www.ktvu.com/video/18409133/index.htmlOak. Attorney: BART Shooting Was UnjustifiableOAKLANDA veteran civil rights attorney who has talked to family members and friends of a man who was shot and killed Thursday by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer said today he thinks the shooting was not justified.John Burris, an Oakland attorney who has filed numerous lawsuits against police departments on behalf of family members of people who have been shot and killed by officers, said, "My sense is clear that this was an unjustifiable shooting."Based on his interviews with witnesses to the incident on the platform of the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland shortly after 2 a.m. Thursday that took the life of 22-year-old Oscar Grant of Hayward, Burris believes the Alameda County District Attorney's office should consider filing manslaughter charges against the officer who shot Grant.Burris, who hasn't yet been officially retained by Grant's family, said Grant was lying on his stomach with his hands out in a non-threatening position when he was shot by a BART police officer who was standing over him."There were no movements and he was not trying to overrun the police officer," Burris said.BART officials said Grant was unarmed and no weapons were recovered at the scene.BART officials have not released the name of the officer who shot Grant. They said the officer has worked for BART for nearly two years.The officer has been placed on administrative leave and tested for both alcohol and drugs as part of standard BART police policy.BART officials implied the shooting was an accident, saying the officer's gun discharged while the police officer and four other officers responded to reports that two groups of young men were fighting on a train that had come from San Francisco and was en route to the Dublin/Pleasanton station.The train was stopped at the Fruitvale station so the officers could get on board and break up the fight.But Burris said, "A gun cannot discharge accidentally. You have to have your finger on the trigger."Burris said witnesses have told him only two people were fighting on the BART train, not two big groups of people."This wasn't a melee with 10 to 12 people," Burris said. However, many people were watching the fight, he said.The attorney said it appears Grant was one of the people who was involved in the fight on the train but he believes "the incident was over" by the time that Grant was shot."(Grant) was on the ground and he wasn't threatening anyone," Burris said.According to BART spokesman Jim Allison three or four people who were on the platform at the Fruitvale station were put in plastic handcuffs during the effort to bring the scuffle under control.He said two men were taken into custody for questioning after the shooting but were not arrested.Allison said today he does not want to respond to Burris's comments because there is still an ongoing investigation into the incident.Burris said he hopes to find out soon if he will be retained by Grant's family.(?? CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.) http://cbs5.com/local/Grant.BART.shooting.2.899241.html
Comments
I bet he does.
yeah I know, but that's what these always turn into (if they don't start out that way)...come with it!
(sounds like an illegal killing to me)
I need to find a source to cite and make this 100% but for some reason BART, who has cameras on 24/7, somehow wasn't running surveilance at the scene of the crime.
But they did decide to confiscate everyone's phone at the scene.
Yo P,
I remember hearing that the surveillance cameras were running, but they're just for monitoring what's going on - they don't actually record anything. Of course they're probably going to say that there were no BART officials paying attention to those particular monitors at the time, which is BS since they knew shit was popping off at that station which is why BART police were called in the first place.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with the phone footage. At this point, everyone who's been watching the news knows that the phones were confiscated, so the police should have to release the footage at some point.
Well they didn't get one young woman's camera- she taped the whole thing, then contacted the news. As lame as SF Chron/Gate is, they have the video footage, along w/her interview on why she taped it (she's also a young mom, just got her new digi-cam and was taking it everywhere with her, and didn't relinquish it to the copz even tho they asked her to).
It's a long clip...maybe 22 mins, but the beginning part has the video clip that she took. WATCH AQUI:
The headlines have really pissed me off..."BART APPEALS FOR CALM AS FOOTAGE SHOWS SHOOING"..."officer may have meant to fire taser"
BULLSHIT! That shit is so, so, wrong, homie was doing everything he could to comply w/what the cops were demanding and he lost his life.
VIDEOS OF THE ACTUAL SHOOTING.
This is really fucked up. Dude did no wrong whatsoever. Murder in the fullest.
I mean, there's a long history of "BART cops shooting Black men in the back" but this maybe the most egregious case ever.
The "cop mistook gun for Taser" may be plausible but I don't see how that's any better in terms of calming public fears. I can't see how the police can spin this in anyway that doesn't involve leaving this dude out there to hang.
what the F*ck need was there to tase him anyway???
no excuses at all. motherfuckers shouldnt be given an gun and a badge if they cant handle a situation like that. i couldnt see from the video why the damn train had to be there the whole time with that scene playing out in front of everyone. get the four fighters off the train and in control (which they did), get the train on its way (which they didnt), question the fighters, run checks on them and let them go.
doh...i is next to o.
watched the vid. disgusting.
I feel physically ill from the second video with the straight-on vantage point.
I saw this video this morning from a discussion on another board. I don't know much about tasers, but can a taser cock back? Because to me it appears that he grabs the gun, gets ready to shoot, and shoots. If he had enough time to cock back the gun, he probably has enough time to think about pulling the trigger, and perhaps by even pulling the gun out, he already knew what he was going to do.
That's the worst excuse I've ever heard for a Police murder. He's a trained officer of the law. When dealing with weapons, all Police know the difference between a Taser and a gun.
The first video is completely inconclusive and almost a total waste of time, but the cell phone camera is damning. If these videos weren't released and blown up all over the news, the story would have been the same: "Police say the young man pulled out a weapon and shot unprovoked at the Policeman, who then returned fire in self defense."
Because, you know, if the bullet wouldn't have conveniently imbedded itself into the victim's skull first, there might have been some innocent person hurt.
"Don Cameron, a former BART police sergeant and weapons expert who now teaches police officers about proper use of force, said today that he had watched footage of the shooting of Grant and was convinced that the officer had meant to fire a Taser - a device that he said BART began using recently.
Footage taken from inside a BART car by a phone camera, first shown by KTVU television, shows officers forcing Grant to the ground and trying to hold him down. One officer appears to try to put cuffs on him before drawing his weapon and firing. In the video, Grant appears to struggle with the officers, though it is unclear exactly what he was doing.
Cameron said he made his conclusion based in part on the officer's stance, and the fact that a second officer moved away from Grant just before he was shot, perhaps trying to avoid a second-hand shock.
"If someone was actively resisting, which it appeared this guy was, the device to use would be the Taser, to overcome his resistance," Cameron said. "The Taser is a great controlling device. But if you grab the wrong device, you kill somebody.[/b]"
This is the saddest part to me, because it makes me remember every shakey police cover story that I've ever heard. I don't have a hard time believing that 90% of these cover ups are similar stark brutal murders carried out by power tripping cops.
Right on to everyone who gets out on the street to protest.
Exactly. The point about Rodney King that people made back in the early '90s isn't that it was so horrific, but that it was so ordinary. The only difference was that someone was around to tape it.
I>And they still got off[/i].
A very similar incident happened in 1992 with Jarrold Hall - that's where I flashbacked to when I first heard about the Grant story. Hall was walking away from a cop (Fred Crabtree) when Crabtree shot him in the back of the head with a shotgun. Somehow, he was cleared of any wrongdoing. If you believe in karma though, Crabtree ended up killing himself four years later.
I can't wait to see how the cops plan to spin this one.
"The big problem is that, unlike San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland cops, the BART police operate with essentially no civilian oversight. BART has no police review commission, no procedure for citizens to complain (other than to the cops themselves), and no formal review of these incidents by anyone other than police brass."
I remember there being reports that Crabtree died of fatal autoerotic asphyxiation
appropriate....he was a jag-off
just to save you lil' dudes the time
[soulstrut apologist]b-b-b--but he served his time. he's an innocent man now! Not all cops are bad yo know[/soulstrut apologist]