28 year old former police officer Johannes Mehserle is on trial in Los Angeles for the murder of Oscar Grant, and testified in his defense yesterday. Grant, a 22 year old black man who Mehserle shot in the back, had already been handcuffed and placed on his stomach in an Oakland CA BART train station on January 1, 2009. Multiple bystanders caught the murder on their cell phone videocams, and had to escape from police, who sought to confiscate their cameras after the shooting. Thankfully, many of them fled the rogue cops and released the videos to the world.
Mehserle took the stand in his defense yesterday, and according to a report from colorlines.com, defense attorney Michael L. Rains sought to 'humanize' Mehserle and emphasize the his lack of training with both tazers and firearms. According to testimony, Mehserle had almost no experience with firearms before joining the police force. He said he never owned guns before becoming a cop and had shot a gun "maybe once...My dad took me to the shooting range, at about thirteen, and that was it."
The L.A. Times reported Mehserle cried on the stand, saying "I thought it was my Taser, I didn't think I had my gun." The former officer then recounted how after he shot Grant, the victim looked at him and said "you shot me". As Mehserle recounted this, he reportedly began sobbing, and Grant's mother walked out of the courtroom. A courtroom spectator, later identified as 24 year old Timothy Killings, shouted "You should save those ... tears, dude." Killings was reportedly arrested for disrupting the court, which then had a recess. In the weeks before testifying, Mehserle reportedly rarely looked at or acknowledged anyone but his defense team.
The Oakland Tribune reported that "Carlos Reyes, a friend of Grant's who sat about 2 feet away from the 22-year-old Hayward man when he was shot, said Mehserle appeared shocked and shouted, "Oh (expletive), oh God, I shot him."
Alameda County Deputy District Attorney David R. Stein is prosecuting the case. Shortly after the shooting, YouthRadio.org posted an audio interview with a friend of Grant's who witnessed the murder: "At yesterday's protest Salvin Moore, a former classmate of Oscar Grant, gives his eye witness account of what occurred at Fruitvale station the night his friend was slain." YouthRadio's twitter account is posting updates on the trial.
The case has received surprising little media attention in Los Angeles. The latest revelations by the former officer reveal, perhaps, a result of an anti-gun culture which has permeated society in the last few decades. Police departments often urge the public to "report illegal guns', to turn in their guns for cash, and oftentimes arrest innocent people for having firearms, such as the case of New Orleans resident Patricia Konie, an elderly woman who was brutalized by police for simply showing them she had a pistol to protect herself. A couple in Houston was recently stopped and the driver arrested for legally carrying a firearm concealed under the seat, despite the fact that this is undeniably legal in Texas.
Meanwhile, the cops that are competent enough to differenciate between their tazers and pistols use them to tazer 86 year old grandmothers, unarmed leggless men in wheelchairs, and ten year old girls.
Oscar Grant's death was an unspeakable tragedy, which was facilitated in part by a dumbed down culture which entrusts incompetent control-freak cops with deadly weapons. Something needs to be done. For the sake of Los Angeles, Oakland, and the especially the Grant family, I hope justice will be served in this case.
Comments
Since there was no reason at that point to electro-torture Grant, either, I have no sympathy for the murderer. Cops should not be permitted to carry guns or Tasers on the job, but should seek back-up from the sovereign individuals surrounding them if they need help. A badge and a gun (or a Taser) are a deadly combination.
Marty, A few years back Metro here in Las Vegas arrested a guy. He was handcuffed, decided to run away and the Cop shot him in the back. It was Ruled a justifiable shooting.
It seems every week there's a suicide by Cop in Las Vegas.
This is just a warning to anyone deciding to come to Las Vegas. If you think the only law you have ever broken was a minor traffic violation, there was an incidence here where a Cop told a guy he pulled over for a minor traffic violation to put his hands on the hood of his car. Since it was 115 that day, which made his hood 415, this person could not do what the cop told him. So the cop slammed him into the hot pavement and cuffed him. The person received burns on his face and parts of his body. The cop left him on the pavement a while to let him think if the pavement or hood was hotter.
dang, that is so wrong for the cop to do that putting the guy on the hot hood or hot pavement.
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