For Oscar Grant

If you don't know what the Oscar Grant case is here's my article exploring all the moves made from the beginning to the end.

But quick synopsis is that a cop shot and killed an unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, on new year's day 2009 at a Bay Area Transit station (BART station). As the cop had him restrained and on the floor, he said that he was trying to put Oscar Grant in handcuffs, he maintained that Oscar Grant was resisting.

Against Grant's apparent resistance, he said that that he was reaching for his TASER gun, a yellowish device that was placed on his left belt but instead pulled out his black, heavy handgun located on his right.

The result of the "mistake" was the fatal shooting known as the BART Shooting, the Oscar Grant shooting.

Personally, it seems as if law enforcement's (and the public as well) is too trigger-happy when they see people of color. "Trigger-happy" meaning the automatic response is to use some kind of "technology", a "device" be it a gun, a social service worker, some kind of "intervention" that doesn't include directly handling, "touching" "them."

I wonder, would this cop have made the same mistake if Oscar Grant was some white middle-class college kid?

Video here:



Why am I bringing up the case of Oscar Grant now?


After being apprehended for 6 months, Johannes Mehserle, the cop, is set to be released sometime tomorrow in LA County at 441 Bauchet St., Los
Angeles, CA 90012., June 13 between 12 AM or 8:30 PM, at a time when there is little fanfare.

I think if a case with so many witnesses of law enforcement misbehavior could only manage to put a negligent officer in for what amounted to less than a year, what does that mean for people of color (hell, the general public) who usually do not have the benefit of a camera or camera phones?

Native Guns - Handcuffs (Remix)





Mista FAB - My Life (Oscar Grant Tribute)