Posted on 08/01/2013 1:35:35 AM PDT by thecodont
Lawsuits against BART police officers involved in the 2009 incident that left Oscar Grant shot to death will go forward after a federal appeals court declined Tuesday to grant the officers immunity as law enforcement agents.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco concerned suits brought by Grant's father, who is incarcerated, and by five of his friends, who were detained with Grant at Fruitvale Station in Oakland on Jan. 1, 2009.
Grant had been in a fight on a train. After then-BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot him in the back while trying to handcuff him, Grant's friends were not treated as witnesses but instead were held for hours at BART police headquarters.
The lawsuits - which name six current and former BART officers, including Mehserle and ex-Police Chief Gary Gee - have been on hold for two years while attorneys for the defendants sought to throw out some claims. BART settled suits brought by Grant's mother and daughter, agreeing to pay them $1.3 million and $1.5 million, respectively.
The appeals court panel said Tuesday that many of the complaints raised in the lawsuits needed to be sorted out by a jury. In doing so, the panel mostly affirmed rulings by a lower-court judge.
The appeals court declined to dismiss Grant's father's claim that Mehserle deprived him of his relationship with his son. The panel rejected an argument by Mehserle's attorney that the father, Oscar Grant Jr., who is in prison for murder, was not close enough to his 22-year-old son to make the claim.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Read the comments.
One of my favorites:
“What’s wrong? Didn’t make enough off of that fairy tale of a movie?”
[Fruitvale Station]
There were no police visible anywhere during any of the three times I visited. About a week after my last visit there was a murder on the corner of the encampment - shortly thereafter the police evicted the campers and reclaimed the plaza. All the grass had to be replaced.
Yeah, I think this was the incident.
POLICE SHOOTING AT BART STATION - OSCAR GRANT (TRAIN VIEW) .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OJTa9F2O14
Why would anyone even BE a cop in Oakland? What is worth risking one’s life in that hole?? The citizens sure don’t appreciate it; let them police themselves.
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