New protests over Oakland police killing

RESIDENTS OF Oakland, Calif., and surrounding Bay Area communities will come together again today to demand justice for Oscar Grant III.

Early on New Year's Day, as he lay flat on his stomach on the concrete platform of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station, Grant was shot in the back and killed by BART officer Johannes Mehserle. Dozens of horrified riders witnessed the murder, and several captured it on cell phone video, which has since spread on the Internet.

The killing of the Oakland grocery story worker and African American father of a 4-year-old daughter has provoked a flurry of anger and organizing against racism in the Bay Area.

Today's protest, set to begin outside Oakland City Hall at 4 p.m., looks likely to be the largest yet in a series of demonstrations, some of which have turned into confrontations with police.

Late yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Mehserle had been arrested in connection with the shooting, though authorities refused to say on what charge.

The timing of the arrest, just hours before the planned protest, was lost on no one. The fact that Mehserle had been caught on video committing the killing, but remained free, was a source of bitterness with many Oakland residents.

One week ago--as Grant's funeral was taking place in nearby Hayward, and a few hours before nearly 1,000 people gathered for a protest at the Fruitvale station where he was shot--Mehserle resigned from the force rather than be interviewed by police internal affairs investigators. But Alameda Country District Attorney Tom Orloff didn't file charges at that point.

After meeting with the California president of the NAACP and other civil rights leaders, state Attorney General Jerry Brown appointed a prosecutor to "oversee" BART's internal investigation.

But that wasn't exactly reassuring to community activists. After all, when Brown was the mayor of Oakland from 1999 to 2007, the notorious "Riders" unit of the Oakland police was terrorizing the community, and Brown was an enthusiastic police booster.

THE VIDEOS of the killing show that Grant was lying on the station platform, not even protesting, when Mehserle pulled his weapon and fired. The bullet entered Grant's back, went through him, ricocheted off the concrete floor of the station platform and punctured his lungs.

As Grant lay writhing in pain and choking on his own blood, police rolled him over on his stomach, handcuffed him and began threatening his friends and other BART passengers with arrest--wasting valuable time before they called an ambulance. Grant died on the way to the hospital.

Police attempted to confiscate cell phone videos taken by BART passengers and initially claimed that security cameras didn't record the incident, but one especially graphic video taken by a passenger was released by the Bay Area television station KTVU Channel 2. More videos followed and circulated on the Internet.

On January 5, a spontaneous protest of 20 people took place outside BART Police headquarters. Two days later, there was the 1,000-strong rally and march at the Fruitvale station. On January 10, an emergency town hall meeting of more than 300 people was organized by clergy at the Olivet Missionary Baptist Church. Another one is planned for January 17 to develop and broaden the campaign.

Later in the night after the January 7 protest, several hundred angry demonstrators marched to Oakland City Hall, where police attacked them with clubs and tear gas, arresting more than 100 people.

The mainstream media focused on the small amount of property damage done by some protesters--as if their anger were irrational or inexplicable. But police brutality is nothing new in Oakland. In the last few years, a string of police killings have angered residents, including last spring's shooting death of 15-year-old José Luis Buenrostro-Gonzalez, which remains an open case, with no officers accused of any wrongdoing.

As one 50-year-old African American father of four boys told the BART board of directors on January 8 in a room packed with media from around the world:

I don't know what to tell my boys. They're all straight-A students, but they can't even ride BART without fearing that a cop will shoot them in the back. A lot of people are worried about a few windows getting smashed, but that's the only reason the press is here. I say God bless them. Riots are American as apple pie.

The anger goes well beyond the initial wave of protests and has been building for years. Now, a broad array of civil rights organizations are coming together to demand justice, and that's reflected in the efforts to bring out people to the demonstration today. The protest will start at 4 p.m. at Oakland City Hall, with a planned march to BART headquarters to follow.