Posted on 02/18/2009 7:53:04 AM PST by Starman417
To justify their arrest warrant for BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, Oakland police claimed that Oscar Grant's hands were "restrained" behind his back when Mehserle shot him. Alameda District Attorney was only slightly more circumspect, asserting in his indictment that:
After careful analysis of the video, it is clear that both of Grant's hands were behind his back, a position hands are commonly placed in by police officers in order to handcuff individuals, when the shot was fired into his body.
On the contrary, however, frame by frame analysis of the shooting video proves that Grant's hands were NOT in a restraint position. How did they end up there immediately after the shooting? Grant himself was in the act of swinging his own left arm up behind his own back when Mehserle fired.
Start with the following frame grab (37;05 on KTVU's highlighted video), one half second before Mehserle shot Grant:
Officer Pirone, in the foreground, has just gotten his right knee onto Mr. Grant's neck or shoulder. Pirone's left hand (circled in green) is holding Grant's head down, while his right hand has just gotten hold of Grant's right hand atop Grant's back. Officer Mehserle is standing semi-erect at Mr. Grant's feet. Mehserle's right hand, extended down towards Grant's back, holds his pistol.
From this starting point, the following animation gives a frame by frame look at the next 12/15ths of a second (1/15th of a second per frame, slowed to 1/2 second per frame). The first thing you see is Officer Pirone letting go of Mr. Grant's right hand. Watch the path of Pirone's hand as he pulls it away. Just after Pirone's hand disappears behind his body, Grant's arm appears from roughly the same spot. Grant moves his own arm out and up, then around onto his own back. The red circle highlights the muzzle blast in the frame where the muzzle blast first appears:
Notice the timing. Grant's arm is in mid-swing, still in the air above his back, at the moment when Mehserle's fires. Grant, mortally wounded, then finishes pulling his arm up behind his own back. Here is a frame grab of the fatal instant (at 37;17), when Mehserle's muzzle blast first appears:
Grant is about half way through swinging his left arm (circled in blue) around behind his back.
Why the sudden compliance from Grant, after 30 seconds of constant struggle to keep his arms away from the officers? In his statement to investigators, Officer Pirone says Mehserle told him he was going to tase Grant, and issued a warning to get clear. Grant would have heard this too. When he felt Pirone back off, it seems he swung his left arm onto his back in a last ditch effort to avoid getting tased. That left arm had never been under either officer's control.
Mehserle did briefly get control of Grant's right arm, just a few seconds before the shooting. He immediately used this control of Grant's right hand as an opportunity to start reaching for his gun/Taser, which he had first tried to access about 20 seconds earlier (at 14;13). While fumbling for his gun (an indication of taser confusion), Mehserle lets go of Grant's left hand, which Pirone then snatches up (the position at the beginning of the above animation).
A low-tech lynching
The Oakland Police investigators probably saw that Grant’s arms were tucked behind his back instants after the shooting and just assumed, without looking carefully, that they must have been there before the shooting too. This poor video analysis is excusable. I had to look frame by frame, specifically focused on the placement of everyone’s hands, before I saw the barely visible outline of Grant’s arm first shoot out towards his back at 37;15 (just one frame, or 1/15th of a second, before Mehserle’s gun went off). What is not excusable is the charges brought by Alameda District Attorney Tom Orloff.
Mehserle's motion for bail includes statements of the other officers at the scene, handed over to Mehserle during discovery. Officer Pirone's statement reports clear warning from Mehserle before the shooting that he was going to tase Mr. Grant:
Screenshot of Pirone's statement, cited on p. 9 of Mehserle's bail motion.
Together with Mehserle's evident surprise when his gun went off, this makes Taser-confusion by far the most likely explanation for the shooting. That the shooting was an accident is not just a reasonable possibility. It is almost a certainty, making it grossly irresponsible for Alameda District Attorney Tom Orloff to file ANY charges against Mehserle, never mind murder charges.
There is no way that an honest jury could fail to find boatloads of reasonable doubt that the shooting was on purpose (Orloff's position). On the other hand, there is a very high risk of empaneling Alameda County jurors who believe, as most of Oakland does, that racial justice means any white accused of committing a crime against any black must be found guilty.
Orloff is fully aware of this local mind-set. Oakland streets are full of rioters demanding this outcome, and the so-called reasonable voices are not calling for the rioters to wait for the facts, but are calling for them to trust the system to punish Mehserle. Orloff knows that the facts cannot support conviction, and is just throwing Mehserle to the dogs. This is a purely political prosecution, a race-based lynching, perpetrated by the STATE. It is EVIL.
Given video falsification of his primary grounds for charging Mehserle with murder (that Grant's hands were in a restraint position when Mehserle shot him), District Attorney Orloff ought to withdraw charges. Here is a second chance here for Orloff to do the right thing. Will he? It seems unlikely, when he was not interested in doing the right thing before.
(Excerpt) Read more at Flopping Aces ...
Never thought it to be a great idea to have Tasers same shape and size as firearms.
I agree, I am surprised that they are easy to confuse with a gun. In the heat of the moment people may make mistakes. It would seem that anything that lessens the likelihood that those mistakes can be fatal should be done.
Also, according to a BART police officer that posts at the website BartRage, they had only had these particular Tasers for about 30 days.
Or don’t get in a situation where police have to make split second decisions about your intentions.
That’s my own personal policy!
Bingo! we have a winner
Yes I am going to Monday morning quarterback this because a police officer executed a handcuffed citizen.
Due to the gun or Taser likely mistake, BART Officer Johannes Mehserle should not be charged with murder or negligent homicide. He was a sworn officer acting in the heat of a legal arrest and made a momentary mistake. The slain perpetrator’s relatives still have a case against BART for negligence on the part of one of their agents, Mehserle, but that is a money matter, not a criminal matter.
Uh huh...and you'd be saying that if it was your brother or dad or son that was shot?
ERR! I just read he was handcuffed after he was shot.
Look it up. The video and the articles when this first came out had the guy in handcuffs on the floor face down THEN he got shot by that piece of dogcrap police officer.
Like being already restrained, and cooperating with the cops?
Sometimes the situation comes to you. As in a no-knock raid that has YOUR address instead of the right one.
Bullcrap, he shot a person, who was already under restraint, gangland style. Indefensible.
So, being face down, already under restraint is justification for a cop to shoot you?
Ok look at the video and you still don't make since to what I see.
The story seems to read that he only was starting to cooperate once he heard the cop say he was going to taser him.
I think the officer accidentally drew the wrong weapon. It’s not an excuse for him, or that he shouldn’t face the consequences, I think he drew the wrong weapon.
And I think this will also force the PD to implement different training and placement of weapons if they are going to have both tasers and pistols.
Sure, I’d be upset if the slain person was close to me, but I am looking at the situation in light of established law in the USA. A cop in the course of his legal duties who makes a momentary mistake is not doing a criminal act when the mistake results in harm of another. The same law works for other professionals. Heart doctors used to goof hooking up the heart lung lines until the machine maker colored the line in red and the line out blue. Same deal with the same shape of the grip on a gun/Tazer, but these should have different shapes as one does not look when grabbing in haste.
It seems pretty clear to me in the video above that he wasn’t yet cuffed when he was shot.
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