by Reiko Redmonde and Larry Everest
The New Year in Oakland, California, brought in an old message to Black youth: they can be corralled and murdered for no reason at all, but that they are Black and young. Such is the rationale of state terror: the victim can do nothing to either invite or avoid the assault. "The killing of Oscar Grant was not a mistake or an accident, it was cold-blooded murder." Immediately, the "system's institutions moved to cover up and legitimize this violence and let all the cops but one go free." The powers-that-be seek equilibrium through normalization of murder.
The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant
by Reiko Redmonde and Larry Everest
Early New Yearâs morning phones in Hayward and Oakland were ringing: âWake up, wake up. Somethingâs happened to the boys.â Calls were going back and forth between the families of 22-year-old Oscar Grant and his friendsâfamilies so close all the women were called âaunties.â The youth had gone to San Francisco to celebrate. âWhat the hell had happened?â
The hellish, heart-tearing news soon came. Oscar, their lifelong friend, the one they had played baseball with, gone camping and swimming with, was dead. Shot in the back by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle.
The police murder, caught on cell phone videos, has shocked people. In its wake, the systemâthe police, their lawyers, the District Attorney, the City of Oakland, BART, and the mediaâhave spun all kinds of explanations: the killer-cop was a poorly trained rookie; he meant to go for his taser; he was scared; heâs a lone racist; it was a terrible, unexplainable mistake.
But the events of January 1 show that these âexplanationsâ are lies designed to cover up the truth: the killing of Oscar Grant was not a mistake or an accident, it was cold-blooded murder. It wasnât an isolated act by one rogue cop; it was the culmination of an orgy of brutality by a whole gang of police against a crew of Black youth that included racial profiling and slurs, threats with tasers, assaults, and illegal detention.
The system didnât treat the copsâ actions on January 1 as intolerable exceptions to what theyâre supposed to do; instead, the systemâs institutions moved to cover up and legitimize this violence and let all the cops but one go free. All thisâand the whole nationwide epidemic of police brutality and murderâpoint to the cold truth that brutalizing, terrorizing, and yes murdering oppressed peopleâespecially Black peopleâis what the police are supposed to doânot to âprotect and serve,â but to keep people down.
New Yearâs EveâGearing Up for Suppression
At about 2 am, the BART train operator supposedly radioed that there was a fight on the train. She didnât see any individual involved, and many would question how bad a fight it could have been: no âvictimsâ ever came forward and no fighters were ever identified by any witness. Some said there had been a short shoving match which was quickly broken up. Everyone agrees: the atmosphere inside the train packed with revelers was calm when it pulled into the Fruitvale station, located in a mainly Black and Latino proletarian neighborhood in Oakland.
BART cop Tony Pirone, an ex-Marine, was on the platform and he immediately began targeting Black and Latino youthâalthough he had no description of anyone in the reported âfight.â When four of Oscarâs friends get off, Pirone let three of them leave but grabbed one. Then, yelling and cursing, Pirone banged on the train window and pointed his taser at two young Black menâOscar and his friend Michaelâand ordered them off the train.
As soon as Michael and Oscar stepped off the train, they were hammered. Pirone lunged at Michael, grabbed him by his dreadlocks, and slammed his head, face down, on the concrete, leaving a large cut on the bridge of his nose. Michaelâs friends started to yell, âwhy are you doing that?â âWhat did we do?â Then Pirone grabbed Oscar and hustled him to a wall. Soon other cops came and threatened more youth with their tasers, yelling the âNâ word at the young men, calling them âmotherfuckers.â
When three of Oscarâs other friends got off the train they too were held against the side of the train by Officer Marysol Domenici who thrust a taser at each one, tapping one between the eyes with it.
Another video clip, not shown on TV until weeks after the murder, shows Pirone suddenly stride by Michael, who was handcuffed and lying on the cement, across the platform toward Oscar, hitting him hard in the face, causing his head to snap back.
Oscar fell to a sitting position and put his hands up in submission gesture. One video shows that Pirone then aimed his taser at all three youth in front of him. Although no media has reported it, the video then shows Mehserle striking the youth seated next to Oscar about three times and then handcuffing him. Oscar rises to his knees, protesting.
Pirone then pushed Oscarâs face to the pavement, still threatening to tase him. Mehserle straddled Oscarâs back, pulling his arms back. Pirone dug his knee into Oscarâs neck. People on the train started to shout, âthatâs fucked up. Let him go!â Witnesses heard Oscar cry out in pain and tell Pirone, âI have a four-year-old daughter, donât tase me.â
Oscar and his friends were fully in âpolice control,â not resisting. The video shows Oscar lying face down on the ground with both hands behind his back, barely moving, if at all.
But Pirone and Mehserle didnât stop, they escalated. Pirone claims he heard Mehserle say to him âTony, get away. Back up,â a chilling statement pointing to a cold, calculated decision. With Pirone still on Oscar, Mehserle wrenches his gun from its holster and shoots Oscar Grant at close rangeâin the back.
Cold-Blooded Murder, Cold-Blooded Cover-Up
Mehserleâs attorneys suggest he was going for his taser and made a horrible mistake, while some media âexpertsâ have speculated about how stressed Mehserle must have been. This is absurd. The X26 taser issued to BART cops is plastic and weighs seven ounces. The Sig Sauer that killed Grant is metal and weighs 30 ounces unloadedâmore than four times as much as the taser, and feels completely different.
Videos also show that neither Mehserle nor any of the other six police were âstressed out,â horrified, or regretful about having murdered Oscar. As Oscarâs friends, still handcuffed, yelled for the police to help Oscar, the cops told them to âshut the fuck upâ and said if they werenât silent, they wouldnât call an ambulance. No cop moved to administer first aid. Instead a video clip shows them flipping Oscar over, jerking him up and down, handcuffing him, and leaving him to bleed out on the platform.
The cops werenât in shock or disarray: they immediately began a cover up. No cop radioed that a shooting had occurred. Pirone ordered the train operator to leave the BART station, taking all the witnesses away (instead of getting their names). As the train departed, Domenici ran after people, threatening them and trying to grab their phone cameras.
After the shooting, five of Oscarâs friends were detained in the BART police station for more than five hours. Sources close to the families say that the youth heard BART police laughing, saying, âWe got a good one tonight.â
All this points to the reality that such brutality is ROUTINE for these pigs, including trying to cover it up afterward, and that murdering one of the people can be a cause for laughter and celebration.
What about the âhigher-ups,â BART officials, the City of Oakland, the courts? BART officials express sorrow for the killing, yet their own âinvestigationâ made no recommendations, theyâve reprimanded none of their police, and they claim thereâs no BART surveillance video showing what happened, despite the fact that BART trains and stations all have cameras in them. BARTâs Police Chief Gee wrote a memo to his troops, explaining how to send money to Mehserle while he was in jail.
Oaklandâs DA didnât arrest Mehserle for nearly two weeks (and then only because people rebelled); Pironeâwho initiated the brutality that led to murder and could have been charged with felony murderâhas not even been arrested. Nor have any of the other cops. And in its first âprosecutionâ brief, the DA reiterates the policeâs version of events, including repeating Pironeâs claim that Mehserle thought Oscar was going for his waistband (and possibly a gun). Oscar Grant was unarmed.
All the police violence leading to Oscarâs murder has been treated as normal, âno big deal,â by the authorities and media. And in this system, police violence IS routine and systemic. Take Oscar and his friends: âThese youth are used to being accosted by the policeâ said one of the aunties, âitâs been going on since they were 13 years old.â (Another mother showed Revolution pictures of the wounds her son received after a beating by Hayward Police several years ago, which broke teeth: he had to be treated in the hospital, including for severe taser burns on his back.)
This system is showing that it will do everything it can to protect the ability of its police to brutalize, terrorize and murder the people. Enough is enough!
There is a real need for continued and increased protest, and independent journalistic investigation into the murder and its cover-up. We cannot allow this kind of blatant murder to be âroutinized,â excused, or tolerated.
[Links to videos of the events leading up to, and the murder of Oscar Grant are available at http://www.ktvu.com/news/18426590/detail.html]
Reiko Redmonde and Larry Everest are part of a Revolution newspaper team in the Bay Area. They can be reached at rredmonde@gmail.com and larryeverest@hotmail.com
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