What to think of the Oscar Grant shooting in Oakland, CA
22-year-old Oscar Grant was shot at a BART train station in Oakland 2am on New Years Day. I think a taser fired at the closest standing antagonist in the crowd or Grant would have been a better choice for calming the crowd than shooting a guy laying on the ground, but I would say based on the 3rd video that Hotair.com has up, the crowd, not Oscar Grant, the crowd is lucky only one person got shot. Watch the 3rd video at that link first, then the others
Let me be clear. White guy shoots black person is not always a race issue. If it is, Officer Mehserle deserves to burn. What this officer did is horrendous, but the notion that he purposely executed an unarmed man in front of 100 witnesses is ludicrous. The main theory appears to be he mistook his firearm for his taser. This kind of keystone cop nonsense is appalling and should be prosecuted in a court of law. But don’t turn this into some race war. A handful of cops were surrounded by an intoxicated, loudmouth mob, and the good guys made a mistake. The fact he made a mistake doesn’t mean he should go free, but don’t blow this out of proportion.
Gunshot occurs at 2:57 in the video. As you can see multiple crowd members keep approaching the cops menacingly after multiple requests to stay back. I’d say at least 30-40 people are yelling incessantly at the cops, making this an extremely dangerous situation. There appear to be multiple crowd members pointing cell phones from multiple vantage points, so now cops have to keep making sure none of the arms pointed at them have guns. Pay attention around 2:15, when people start approaching the cops, including the guy in the red hat. At 2:51 and 2:55 there are a few popping noises, and you see a guy with red shoes, I assume to match the red hat, laying on the floor with a cop on top of him. He is not the guy that got shot, but evidently he ignored the cops when he kept approaching them. Then the shot at 2:57, which that 3rd video doesn’t capture.
Turns out Grant may be a felon, but I don’t know if the officer knew that when he shot Grant. I have heard people say it was a weapon felony, but again I don’t know if the officer knew that. BUT IF HE DID, that changes everything you think you know about this crime.
All I ask is wait for the facts to come out. These race monger a-holes running around Oakland talking about slavery is disgusting. This shooting has NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING to do with slavery. Officer Johannes Mehserle deserves his day in court. The businesses of Oakland don’t deserve these riots anymore than Oscar Grant deserved to die. White guy shoots black person is not always a race issue. If it is, Officer Mehserle deserves to burn.
I have heard people say he was a felon, but have found NO links on the internet. If he was, there would be a record, and since I can’t find any, I will stick to what is reported, that he was just your average Joe.
But to say race had nothing to do with it… NO. He was the ONLY african american they pulled. Everyone else was white.
He didn’t resist or anything. Your protests of it having nothing to do with race scare me, and I think you might protest a little too much.
Two things: Oscar Grant was just a regular, unknown citizen before 2009. So no one would have had occasion to publish anything about him, let alone whether he was a felon. Second, he was just killed by a police officer, so no one is going to publish that he is a felon NOW if he is, for awhile, in respect of the family. We’ll find out eventually. I will keep looking to see if he is one, but I heard it on the radio. I’ll change my description until I confirm.
So your contention is out of a big group of people, they pulled mostly whites and one black, and that makes them racist towards blacks? In Oakland? Your logic is flawed.
You are 100% wrong that he was the only black person they “pulled.” The guy on his knees to the right of Grant in the 2nd video is black, and, I would point out, won’t shut his mouth. The guy in the 3rd video who approaches the cops and gets subdued shortly before the gunshot is black. Beyond that the videos are a bit blurry to tell.
He does appear to resist a bit, but not enough to get shot. I did clarify that in my post. A taser appearerd to be the appropriate response.
I don’t know why my protests scare you. Race riots in Oakland destroying the businesses of people who had nothing to do with this should scare you. Politicians yelling angrily about slavery in 2009 should scare you.