I know a little bit about the police. My dad was a cop. I was born in a police station in the apartment above where my dad worked. I recognize that being a cop, as an individual, is a stressful job. However, I am regularly outraged at the way in which cops are treated as the holiest people in society, almost on par with the wealthy elite who run this country (and also never do jail time.)
Ten days ago at our local train station at Fruitvale in Oakland, California, a young butcher apprentice, Oscar Grant, 22, pictured above left, was shot in the back while face down with his hands behind his back. The murder was captured on camera by several train passengers on their phones. There was also actual video footage of Oscar’s murder. The man that shot the guy on the floor was surrounded by cops. Yet the assailant, Johannes Mehserle, walked away. His location is known to everyone, including the Oakland Police Department, yet he remains free, with no charge on him. The reason? When he committed the crime he was a police officer.
Last Wednesday night Oakland police arrested 105 during a demonstration against Oscar Grant’s execution that turned into a riot. Three young men have already gone to court and been charged. Andrew Lewis, 20, was charged with felony possession of cocaine and misdemeanor vandalism during the riot. He was quoted in the local paper saying, “They can go replace that window. A brother cannot replace his life. There can be no justice, because he (Oscar) can’t get his life back. I would have no problem doing the same thing again. I would do the same thing again in a heartbeat.”
Andrew Lewis was in court and charged by the Oakland police and the City Attorney in a heart beat. Meanwhile Officer Mehserle is practically untouchable. The Alameda County District Attorney says he wants to wait a couple of weeks before deciding whether to charge Mehserle with anything. The Transit Authority said of attempts to interview the Officer that killed Oscar, “ We’ve been trying aggressively to get him to come him in, but he hasn’t. It’s been very frustrating.”
If you or I shot someone in the back while we were kneeling on top of them, surrounded by cops, surrounded by over a hundred witnesses on a train: videotaped, cell phone-camered, and the murder was shown 2 million times on YouTube and on TV stations nationwide, would we be untouchable? The last two passengers that local Tranist cops killed, one while the passenger was running away from them, the other a mentally ill person who was naked, got no justice. Both police officers were cleared of any wrongdoing. The families and friends of the deceased don’t agree.
There should not be one law for the rich and the police, (who’s top priority is to protect them), and another law for the rest of us.
Oscar died several hours after he was shot in the back. The bullet was fired directly into his body, went through his body, hit the concrete and came back out through his body. He died New Years Day, 2009.
LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKy-WSZMklc
1 comment:
I was closely involved with the Jerrold Hall case some years ago. Jerrold Hall was shot by a BART cop named Crabtree. Crabtree shot him in the back of the head with a shotgun as he was walking away from him.
The cop's police dog, instead of attacking Hall, went up and licked him. I managed to get a resolution passed at my local Union calling on the Oakland DA to indict Crabtree for murder.
I then took the issue in to the wider trade Union movement and accompanied his father, who was a firefighter, to many speaking engagements.
Crabtree eventually committed suicide by hanging himself. I assumed it was due to his conscience getting to him having murdered that kid.
But I was told by a very reliable source in the police department that Crabtree was involved in some sort of sexual activity that included this sort of thing, almost choking oneself during climax or something like that.
The source of this information was very reliable I believe but naturally I have no evidence of its accuracy as the official verdict was suicide.
I also don't think Mr Hall the father got redress in court which is something that astonished me as I had an extensive file on the case and there is no way that Crabtree killed Hall junior in self defense, it was murder.
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