Early on New Year’s Day, the BART cops shot and killed Oscar Grant, a 22 year-old father, at the Fruitvale station in Oakland. The train was stopped and Grant and others pulled off because they were allegedly involved in a brawl. The BART cops restrained him, shot him in the back, and then cuffed him. He died later at the hospital.
Passengers videotaped the BART cops as they restrained Grant and then shot him in the back. The videos clearly show Grant facedown on the platform with cops on top of him, when the officer draws his gun and shoots him. They also clearly show Grant putting his hands up, and putting up a minimal amount of resistance. The cops are going to try to claim that the shooting was a mistake, that the gun “discharged” accidentally instead of being fired into Grant’s back with intent to kill him.
Here is the San Francisco Guardian article about the shooting and here and here are news stories from KTUV featuring the cell phone video’s taken by other folks on the scene.
One Comment
We can’t predict what will come of this case, but even so this shows the power of copwatching… without these two witnesses with their camera phones Oscar Grant could have been a statistic, yet another young black man killed by the cops.
I think it bodes well that phones that take pictures and video are becoming more and more common.