Mehserle on trial for police brutality

The former BART cop who was caught on multiple cell phone cameras murdering Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale train station on New Year's morning in 2009 is once again on trial for excessive force.

Less than two months before he executed Grant at pointblank range in an Oakland, California train station, the ex-officer allegedly used excessive force and violated the constitutional rights of Kenneth Carrethers at a separate Bay Area Rapid Transit hub.
Carrethers’ attorneys say that on November 15 2008, their client was angry over the BART cops’ lack of help in a case of vandalism that targeted his car. Carrethers says that he called the police force “useless,” and from there Mehserle and a handful of other offices became irate. According to court filings, Mehserle used a leg sweep to take Carrethers to the ground, then punched and kicked him while he was on the pavement.
The complaint continues that cops tied up Carrethers’ arms and legs before hauling him away.
"Well, have you learned not to mess with police officers?" Mehserle allegedly asked him.
-Russia Today

Linton Johnson demoted

OAKLAND, Calif.—Longtime Bay Area Rapid Transit spokesman Linton Johnson has been removed from that position at the agency.
BART Board President Bob Franklin said this week that Johnson has been assigned to a new role and will develop large-scale communications strategies for major agency programs.
Johnson had come under fire after taking credit for an August decision to shut down cell phone service in BART stations. The goal was to hinder protests that began after the fatal shooting of a transient by BART police.
Johnson also reportedly tried to stock a news conference with supporters angry about the protests.
-Inside Bay ARea

Linton Johnson still MIA

Oh brotha, where art thou?

Linton Johnson, the all-purpose public voice of BART, remains on leave more than a month since his public relations war with protesters put him even more under the spotlight. BART officials said Wednesday they don’t know when he will return. Johnson’s response to email messages says that he is on a two-month leave for family reasons and he will return around Oct. 17.

His previous email message had him returning Sept. 19, but that was amended with the later return time.

Johnson, the chief media spokesman for an agency often in the news, made news in the last month during the continuing tensions between BART and protesters and hackers upset with shootings by BART police officers.
-Inside Bay Area

Family reasons?
More like he has been shamed into submission by anonymous hackers who posted a picture of him exposing his family jewels while embracing a shirtless man.
His incompetence on the job, which is detailed in the Inside Bay Area article quoted above, pales in comparison to the damage done by this.
Even though Anonymous gets accused of being immature and unfocused, I call this brilliant move very strategic and very targeted, and apparently, extremely effective.
Immature, maybe, but effective as well.
When you're paid a helluva lot of money to be a public persona, don't be surprised if your persona is made public.

NMA Anonymous/BART cartoon

War against BART

BART police union website hacked

Now we're talkin. Anonymous hacked into the MyBART website and released names and contact info of its customers on Sunday. That's how they usually roll, and it's a tactic that doesn't exactly win them a lot of public support. However, today, in the wake of a mildly annoying protest in San Francisco on Monday, they took the fight to the cops.

A hacker group broke into a BART police union website Wednesday and released names, home addresses, email addresses and personal passwords of 102 officers in the second cyberattack against the transit system in a week.

BART and the police union confirmed the attack and criticized it as jeopardizing the security of police officers, who guard their home addresses carefully.
-Inside Bay Area

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

Oscar Grant civil cases can proceed

A federal judge has ruled that Oscar Grant's family and some of his fellow BART passengers can go ahead with both illegal arrest and unnecessary force civil lawsuits against the transit agency.
According to SFGate, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of San Francisco said that other evidence, including videos, suggested the 22-year-old Hayward man "was completely incapacitated and posed no threat to anyone," and therefore a jury should decide whether any force, including a stun gun, was justified.
It is also questionable whether or not it was lawful for BART police to detain Oscar Grant and the other men in the first place.

Johannes Mehserle Trial Jury Set

There are NO blacks on the jury.

Mehserle's attorneys will try to prove that Oscar Grant deserved to be shot in the back while unarmed, handcuffed face down on the ground, and in police-custody, by pointing to his criminal record, which includes a previous charge of resisting arrest.
They so far have succeeded on two separate occasions in their attempts to keep blacks, whom they have accused of not being able to be impartial, off of the jury.

Scoreboard:
Mehserle 2
Justice 0

Here are some other interesting tidbits from the first week of the trial.

BART doles out $1.5 million to family of Oscar Grant

BART is paying out a $1.5 million settlement to Oscar Grant's baby mama, who had filed a $50 million lawsuit filed against the transit agency after Grant was fatally shot in the back by former BART Officer Johannes Mehserle while he was handcuffed and in police custody on New Year's Day 2009.

"No matter what anyone's opinion of the case may be, the sad fact remains: this incident has left Tatiana without a father."
-BART board President James Fang