Police in SF murder second man in 2 weeks

On Saturday July 16, at 4:40 pm. a 19 year-old man was shot 6 to 10 times by SFPD, and his lifeless body was left in plain view in a pool of blood. He had originally been detained by officers for not possessing a MUNI transfer pass. Police claim that he was armed and fired at them (while running away) before they murdered him, but it took almost 6 hours for them to produce the alleged handgun.
Another video was posted on youtube that claims to capture footage of the handgun, but it is far from conclusive regarding whether or not the shiny object is in fact a weapon. The person who took the footage doesn't appear interested in the alleged handgun while they are filming the video, so it's hard to know if they knew whether or not it was a gun when they were shooting the video, or if they decided that after hearing the police account and viewing their footage on a bigger screen.
The video does not focus on the alleged weapon, but it does catch a witness on the scene pointing to and picking up a shiny, flat, rectangular object (it looks like a cell phone) that had been lying on the ground several feet from where the alleged gun was allegedly lying. He does not point to any other objects lying on the ground, nor does he appear to be looking at anything else on the ground. The witness disappears off camera after that and is not seen again. Police have claimed that this footage proves that the man picked up the gun and hid it from police for 6 hours.

This killing happened 13 days after the lethal shooting of homeless man Charles Blair Hill on the Civic Center BART platform by BART police.

A press conference has been scheduled for noon by SF Education Not Incarceration, the Idriss Stelley Foundation & the SF Bayview Newspaper. It will take place at the corner of 3rd Street & Oakdale.

Interestingly, the SF Bay View website has been down all morning...

Murderer Mehserle to be released this Sunday

Johannes Mehserle, the former BART cop who was caught on multiple video cameras killing Oscar Grant by shooting him in the back while Grant lay facedown on the ground with another officer's knee on the back of his neck, will be released from jail on Sunday, June 12.
A protest has been called for 3pm that day at "Grant station," the site of the New Year's Day 2009 murder.

Murderer Mehserle ready to start a new life

Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, who murdered Oscar Grant in front a trainload of people on New Year’s Day in 2009, will walk the streets of California a free man sometime this month. It was originally reported that he would go before Judge Robert Perry (the man who helped him get a reduced sentence less than a year ago) today, but that hearing has been rescheduled for June 13.
Unfortunately, Oscar Grant is still dead, and unlike Mehserle, won’t have to go through the tragedy of having to rebuild his life with the help of well-connected colleagues that can get him a job in "either sales or business."

Due to the classification of being a non-violent felon, Mehserle could walk free in the next few weeks after serving less than one calendar year of his prison sentence.

In Oakland and in Los Angeles, where Mehserle’s trial took place and he is currently being held, reaction to the news of Mehserle’s classification was met with shock and anger among activists and observers of the case.

“I don’t know how much more violent you can get than killing someone!” said Tiah Starr, an organizer with the October 22nd Coalition against Police Brutality, one of the founding organizations of the Los Angeles Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant.
“It’s insane that he only did a year in jail and Oscar Grant is dead … it just makes no sense to me,” said Starr.

Sheilagh Polk, a former Los Angeles resident who moved to Oakland four years ago, felt that the charge of involuntary manslaughter never should have been an option. “Mehserle … should have been convicted of second degree murder; he pulled out his gun, cocked it, pulled the trigger and executed an unarmed, young Black man with full confidence that he would get away with it. And he did,” she said.
Davey D, a journalist and 20-year resident of the Bay Area, felt that the non-violent designation was just one more indicator of the justice system’s failure to work for African Americans. “At the end of the day, this is just a repudiation of Black life,” he said. “That’s what this all boils down to – the verdict, the picking of the jury, the sentencing – this is all a refusal to acknowledge and see Black life as something that is valuable.”
-SF Bay View