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did the BART police shooting thread disappear?

wayneco

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update:

Officer in BART shooting quits force, avoids internal affairs quizzing

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/07/BA2N155BAH.DTL


Officer in BART shooting quits force, avoids internal affairs quizzing
Demian Bulwa,Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 7, 2009

(01-07) 15:59 PST OAKLAND -- The BART police officer who shot an unarmed man to death on the platform of the Fruitvale Station in Oakland early New Year's Day resigned from the force today, avoiding an interview with police internal affairs investigators about the incident.

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Officer Johannes Mehserle, 27, was supposed to have been questioned today by internal affairs about why he shot Oscar Grant, 22, of Hayward as Grant lay face down on the station platform, BART spokesman Linton Johnson said.

However, Mehserle did not show up for the interview. Instead, his lawyer and union representative appeared and handed over a short resignation letter, Johnson said.

Mehserle's resignation is effective immediately. BART said its investigation of the shooting would continue, as will a separate investigation by the Alameda County district attorney's office.

BART had come under fire from John Burris, the attorney for Grant's family, for not having forced Mehserle to talk with internal affairs investigators since the shooting. Unlike in criminal investigations, in which a suspect has the right not to talk to police, officers involved in on-the-job shootings must talk to inspectors as part of administrative inquiries or risk being fired.

Mehserle's resignation means he does not have to talk to BART investigators.

"I'm not surprised," Burris said of Mehserle's departure. "It should have happened long ago. It's not the end, of course, for the family. They would prefer that he be prosecuted and sent to jail."

Johnson said today that Mehserle's attorney, David Mastagni, had postponed a meeting between the officer and internal affairs investigators that had been set for Tuesday and wanted to reschedule it for next week. Instead, BART told Mehserle to show up this morning, Johnson said.

Mehserle resigned the same day that Grant's family gathered in Hayward for his funeral. Burris has filed a $25 million claim against BART on behalf of Grant's mother and 4-year-old daughter, the likely precursor to a lawsuit.

In the claim, Burris said Mehserle "mercilessly fired his weapon" at Grant after the supermarket butcher and several friends were pulled off a train at the Fruitvale Station following a reported dispute with another group of passengers.

Grant was unarmed when he was shot in the back; the bullet went through him and ricocheted off the platform, then hit him again in the torso.

BART, Mehserle and the officer's lawyer have all been silent about why Mehserle opened fire, but BART has said one possibility it is investigating is that Mehserle mistook his service weapon for a Taser stun gun.

Mehserle was a BART police officer for two years. He and other BART officers were equipped with stun guns only within the past few weeks.

Grant's death has attracted attention well beyond the Bay Area, driven in part by the fact that the shooting was filmed by at least two cell phone video cameras. Footage has been widely aired on television stations.

An official of the human rights group Amnesty International USA, Dalia Hashad, said today before Mehserle resigned that BART's delay in interviewing the officer "hints at the callousness to the worth of human life to a public that is all too familiar with racial profiling, police brutality and cover-ups."
 

Grapeshot

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Original thread was locked/deleted in part because it was not substantially OC related. This site does not exist as a place for LEO bashing nor reporting of such incidents IMO.

How is this different?

Yata hey
 

Citizen

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Doug Huffman wrote:
Yes, it was disappeared due to the participation of a notorious disruptor, also banned.

Yes, it seems to have been deleted.

It was obviously off-topic for this forum, as isWayneco's update.

Plus, that thread turned into cop-bashing. As this one may, too, by the very few people on this forum, unappreciated by the rest of us, who feel the need to bash all LEO's rather than distinguish between good and bad.

However, the disruptor was not banned.

http://opencarry.mywowbb.com/view_topic.php?id=20294&forum_id=4&jump_to=337520#p337520

ninth post down.
 

Sheriff

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Why would this subject not be related to the topic of "Self Defense"?

I think it's more than safe to assume the cop will claim self defense after he is criminally charged.
 

smash29

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SFCRetired wrote:
If, as someone suggested, this particular LEO mistook his firearm for his TASER, this would tend, in my mind, to reinforce the idea that carrying weapons less lethal than a firearm is a very bad idea unless one does extensive training to reduce the possibility of such a mistake.

As a relatively new shooter I've only recently started paying attention to LE firearms and belt set ups but isn't the Taser usually on the"weak hand" side? The possible confusion from having them both on the same side brings to mind a person I saw with their gun and cell phone hanging off their belt 3 inches apart. With that it would seem to me that in the heat of the moment you may1)attempt to draw on a bad guy but instead give him a view down the barrel of youriPhone or 2) accidentally answer your gun. Neithersituation sound very good.

Sorry to contibute to somethingconsidered "off topic" but it's just what came to mind OC-wise when reading this....
 

Tomahawk

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Mistook a pistol for a taser? Not remotely credible.

I agree that this thread may turn into "cop-bashing".

I also think that there's a very good reason for that, especially after seeing the video.

It is freedom-related, though, but you know how it is...
 

Hawkflyer

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SFCRetired wrote:
...SNIP.

If, as someone suggested, this particular LEO mistook his firearm for his TASER, this would tend, in my mind, to reinforce the idea that carrying weapons less lethal than a firearm is a very bad idea unless one does extensive training to reduce the possibility of such a mistake.

SNIP...


Actually this may be a very unique part of the issue. The newer Tasers that are being issued to LEOs actually are shaped like pistols and are held the same way. The best information we have so far indicates that thistransit officer had been issued the taser only about three weeks before this incident.

Depending on the model of the Taser and the model of his side arm, the feel of these devices in his had may have been quite similar especially with the distractions that he was working under.

But the fact is we do not have all the information on this incident yet. I presume everyone is innocent until PROVED guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Looking at a few videos and reading the press reports does NOT constitute a trial, despite some peoples tendency to convict on that basis. In fact video does not always show what it appears to the untrained eye to show until it is properly processed to reveal every field or frame.

With all the chatter on this forum about the unreliability of the press, it astounds me how quick many are to believe the same press when the reports are about this sort of incident. Trust me they are no more accurate with a LEO involved shooting than they are with a Citizen involved shooting. So while it may appear that the Officer may have engaged in serious misconduct or had a negligent discharge that took this mans life, lets all just wait and see what comes out in the trial before anyone convicts him on press reports. There WILL be a trial.
 

Grapeshot

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smash29 wrote:
As a relatively new shooter I've only recently started paying attention to LE firearms and belt set ups but isn't the Taser usually on the"weak hand" side? The possible confusion from having them both on the same side brings to mind a person I saw with their gun and cell phone hanging off their belt 3 inches apart. With that it would seem to me that in the heat of the moment you may1)attempt to draw on a bad guy and but instead give him a view down the barrel of youriPhone or 2) accidentally answer your gun. Neithersituation sound very good.

Sorry to contibute to somethingconsidered "off topic" but it's just what came to mind OC-wise when reading this....
Actually very pertinent. Good to separate the two and to know the difference.

Then train, train and retrain.

Everything I carry has a special place and everyday, every time these things go in the same place. The only exception is my digital recorder which never is on my belt.

Yata hey
 

smash29

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Hawkflyer wrote:
Actually this may be a very unique part of the issue. The newer Tasers that are being issued to LEOs actually are shaped like pistols and are held the same way.
This is why I posted on this thread. Now that I'm paying attention tothe guns around meI often do a doubletake when I seea LEOcarrying what looks like a gun on each hip. Only after looking again do Irealize that the "gun" on the weak side is in fact a Taser.
 

Tomahawk

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Hawkflyer wrote:
Actually this may be a very unique part of the issue. The newer Tasers that are being issued to LEOs actually are shaped like pistols and are held the same way. The best information we have so far indicates that thistransit officer had been issued the taser only about three weeks before this incident.

Depending on the model of the Taser and the model of his side arm, the feel of these devices in his had may have been quite similar especially with the distractions that he was working under.

But the fact is we do not have all the information on this incident yet. I presume everyone is innocent until PROVED guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Looking at a few videos and reading the press reports does NOT constitute a trial, despite some peoples tendency to convict on that basis. In fact video does not always show what it appears to the untrained eye to show until it is properly processed to reveal every field or frame.

With all the chatter on this forum about the unreliability of the press, it astounds me how quick many are to believe the same press when the reports are about this sort of incident. Trust me they are no more accurate with a LEO involved shooting than they are with a Citizen involved shooting. So while it may appear that the Officer may have engaged in serious misconduct or had a negligent discharge that took this mans life, lets all just wait and see what comes out in the trial before anyone convicts him on press reports. There WILL be a trial.

Proof beyond reasonable doubt is not required to have an opinion for discussion purposes only, especially when the video evidence is so stark. Looking at that video, the shootee was face down on the floor and restrained by officers, when one of them calmly and deliberately stood up, drew his pistol, aimed and fired.

Perhaps he is just a knucklehead who thought he needed a pistol after the suspect was detained, and his knuckleheadedness extends to pulling triggers by accident. At best extremely negligent homocide.

Perhaps he is a knucklehead who can't tell the difference between a pistol and a taser. Still dumb, still no excuse, and seeing as the shootee was restrained I don't see a need for a taser, either. At best extremely negligent homocide.

Or, perhaps he is a bad guy who deliberately executed the man for some reason. Murder.

I like to apply the same standards across the board. The state and its agents are not above the moral law, statutory law aside. Had a regular citizen done what I saw on that video, I could only conclude that he deliberately murdered that man. Any prosecutor would agree with me and throw the book at him.

This is not my website, and I fully support John's decision to do whatever he pleases with this thread, and I understand why.
 

Citizen

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Hawkflyer wrote:
SNIP Trust me they are no more accurate with a LEO involved shooting than they are with a Citizen involved shooting.
Hey!!!!

Watch it with that capital "c" there!

:)
 

Hawkflyer

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Tomahawk wrote:
I like to apply the same standards across the board. The state and its agents are not above the moral law, statutory law aside. Had a regular citizen done what I saw on that video, I could only conclude that he deliberately murdered that man. Any prosecutor would agree with me and throw the book at him.

This is not my website, and I fully support John's decision to do whatever he pleases with this thread, and I understand why.


That is the problem I see.

Do people apply the same standards? From what I have seen they do not. I repeatedly see people complain that LEOs are not held to the same standards as regular citizens. Well that is a two way street. If you are going to hold LEOs to a lower threshold of guilt or innocence then you should apply that same low standard to citizen involved shootings.

So what we have here is people looking at low resolution video over the Internet, and stating emphatically what that video shows. I can absolutely tell you that there is more in that video than you are seeing under these viewing circumstances. You would need to correctly play the ORIGINAL video to see the truth of what that video actually contains.

So here we have a lot of actions that people are stating they can tell were wrong and saying that this shows without a doubt that this LEO murdered this man. If we are holding people to the same standards, why are these same people not looking at the Fredericks incident and saying "well he had drugs in his possession so he was likely high and did not hear the police announce their presence and maybe he shot the LEO on purpose to avoid a drug bust"?

The reason we SHOULD be giving Fredericks the benefit of the doubt, is the same reason we should wait to reach public judgement on this LEO. WE SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE THE FACTS WE THINK WE HAVE. These are all humans with human failings and they should ALL be given the benefit of the doubt until ALL the evidence can be judged.

I would agree that the owners of this forum deleted this thread topicfor a reason, and it was wrong for the OP to put it back up.The reason it is wrong is because no matter how reasonable the discussion starts out, it will eventually fall into a pit of name calling and rushing to judgements that are not supported by knowledge of ALL of the facts. We also know it will attract a lot of people the owners are trying to eliminate from this forum. I for one support them deleting it again. If the OP wants to discuss this topic there are a lot of other forums out there to do that.
 

Citizen

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Hawkflyer wrote:
Citizen wrote:
Hawkflyer wrote:
SNIP Trust me they are no more accurate with a LEO involved shooting than they are with a Citizen involved shooting.
Hey!!!!

Watch it with that capital "c" there!

:)

LMAO

I have been doing that for a long time. I wondered when you would catch it:lol:

Yeah, but this time you're getting me into danger of grave bodily injury or death!!!

:D
 

Grapeshot

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Citizen wrote:
Hawkflyer wrote:

Yeah, but this time you're getting me into danger of grave bodily injury or death!!!

:D
Just check yourself each day - if you are upright and don't smell too bad everything's all right. :lol:

Yata hey
 

Citizen

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Grapeshot wrote:
Citizen wrote:
Hawkflyer wrote:

Yeah, but this time you're getting me into danger of grave bodily injury or death!!!

:D
Just check yourself each day - if you are upright and don't smell too bad everything's all right. :lol:

Yata hey

Yeah, especially around him. Don't wanta become one of his "subjects". Not givin' him any 'scuses, if you know what I mean. He's too handy with that word "forensics."

'Course, maybe he's having a slow month and is trying to drum up some business.

:)
 
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