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 ...
I'd be pretty outraged if I believed that the cop intentionally executed him but I don't see any particular evidence to believe that yet.
I like to think he drew the wrong weapon too. Unfortunately, I guess we will never no. Nonetheless he should be given the same benefit of the doubt that you and I would be given in that situation, if you shot someone you had face down and prone being partially restrained by a couple of your buddies: Zero.
The operative word is "legal", and that can and will be second guessed by the courts.
All the involved police officers' actions leading up to the shooting must be legal for a legal arrest.
There is evidence to show that Grant was struck three times in the face by the other officer restraining Grant. If this is determined to be an assault, Grant was not resisting and the subsequent use of force is illegal.
This short section of video tends to support a gross disregard for life and incompetence rather than murder, but comes nowhere near clearing Mehserle of criminal action.
Any "sworn" officer should have to face a bullet in the head at the edge of a ditch if he commits ANY felony. We would get honest police officers or smarter thugs. Either one would be an improvement.
Please explain how that wouldn't be fair...
Are we saying that cops are reaching to tase people so quickly they can’t even tell if they got a friggin taser in their hand? I sure as hell don’t reach for my weapons in “haste” unless I think injury to myself or my family is imminent.
But, but,...some animals are MORE equal than others.
OK, you put me prone, face down on the ground, and use a knee to keep me from reaching into my waistband and pulling my pistol. Try it, please. No handcuffs were on at this point.
Police training is to do a quick sweep for obvious weapons, then secure the suspect, THEN do a complete search for weapons. The securing is the most dangerous part as it requires the officer to use at least one hand to access their cuffs, and their attention is necessarily divided. This is when the SHTF and most hand-to-hand incidents occur.
This is still a bad shooting, and I think the officer should be charged with negligent homicide (not murder). An officer that uses the wrong tool, even mistakenly, must be held responsible for that error as it is their JOB to use the appropriate tool. But his desire to use his TASER (as claimed) was understandable given the timing of the arrest and the actions of the suspect.
Kind of wrong terminology used in this, the day of digital video. Wouldn't "second by second analysis" be more appropriate?
apparently the video creates 15 frames a second...
On one hand I don't think the cop would deliberately pull a gun and shoot the man in the back, on the other hand I don't see how you can mistake a gun in your hand for a taser, even in the heat of the moment.
This man was on the ground with two other officers on top of him, there was no threat to any of them and the shooter over reacted. Remember, cops are supposed to be trained professionals (their own words) so they should be held to a higher standard and not make "mistakes"
When ordinary citizens who defend themselves are given the same considerations as cops when they defend themselves or their families, I'd be more willing to cut the guy some slack. And in this case, the cop was not even defending himself or others
At this point, I believe this is involuntary manslaughter, JMO
Drew the wrong weapon?! Gimme a break. That cowboy cop has been playing too many Mean Streets video games. Any idea what the weight difference is between a pistol and a taser or the difference in location of the pistol habitually worn in location (a) while a month old taser is worn in location (b). Every office on the Bart Police Force needs to be put through a battery of psychological evaluation tests for signs of innate insecurity, sadism and control pathologies. This particular officer needs a one way limo ride to the victim’s neighborhood.
“At this point, I believe this is involuntary manslaughter, JMO”
Yep, at the very least. I don’t think even using a Taser was justified based on what I saw in that video. The guy had been subdued.
Due to the gun or Taser likely mistake, BART Officer Johannes Mehserle should not be charged with murder or negligent homicide.
A Taser mistake sounds like pretty much the definition of negligent homicide to me. He was negligent in his choice of weapon and because of that committed a homicide. Manslaughter at the very least. Both of those charges exist for unintentionally causing the death of another, which is what happened here.
No, like hanging out on the floor of the BART instead of getting a job (even at McDonalds), going home (even if you ride a bike), and not being resistive (even if that means you are a little put out). But, this is all way too beneath the average thug that causes all of this trouble and costs the law-abiding citizens billions.
You have to be a lurker from the DU. Go back to your nest.
So, waiting for a train is justification for a cop to commit murder?
It’s funny how people who have a serious lack of debate skills say thoroughly ignorant garbage like “You have to be a lurker from the DU.” So, does this mean that everyone on FR shares your opinion that a police state, where cops here can execute restrained people like the KGB did back in the days of the USSR in Moscow? Clearly, this cop screwed up, and it wasn’t even close to being the kids fault the cop murdered him.
LMAO! Please, it's not even close to that. This is murder, at the very least.
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