Bald-Faced Lies and Coverups to Legitimize Police Brutality and Murder

From the Bay Area Revolution Team

Early in the morning of January 1, at least 3 cell phone videos captured a gut-wrenching murder scene: Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cop Johannes Mehserle standing over Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old Black man. Oscar, lying on his stomach on the cement platform at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland, California, offering no resistance. Mehserle then methodically pulling out his gun and shooting Oscar in the back at point-blank range. Then Mehserle and another cop nudging Oscar with their feet, roughly lifting him up, turning him over, but showing no remorse, with no move to check his pulse or breathing, no attempts to administer CPR, as Oscar's blood filled his mouth and stained the pavement. (Oscar was pronounced dead at the hospital about 6 hours later.)

These videos (among other evidence) proved that Oscar Grant was murdered in cold-blood—without any justification.

Did this mean that BART (a governmental agency and arm of the state) and the rest of the power structure would admit the truth—that their officer had murdered someone in cold blood and should now be tried and convicted of first-degree murder so justice could be served?

No! On April 3, after months of telling the public how sorry they were about Oscar's death, after offering their "condolences" to his family, and after promising to investigate the killing and get at the truth, BART filed its first legal response (an "Answer") to the Grant family's $50 million dollar civil rights lawsuit. BART's "Answer" is yet another outrage: it blames Oscar for his own murder: For example the BART "Answer" states, "The decedent Oscar Grant was guilty of willful misconduct and wanton and reckless behavior...."

They bring up the "fight" issue: "The decedent Oscar Grant willfully and wrongfully provoked the altercation in which he was involved, and said provocation of decedent Oscar Grant was a cause of the injuries and damages allegedly sustained."

BART claims Oscar attacked BART cop Tony Pirone, saying that he (Grant) "willfully, wrongfully, unlawfully and without just cause or provocation made an assault and battery against and upon the person of Anthony Pirone."

And incredibly, BART claims that the cops needed to defend themselves and threaten Oscar Grant because if they hadn't, they, the cops, would have been "beaten, bruised, and ill-treated."

So according to BART, the police were acting in "self-defense" and had done nothing wrong leading up to Mehserle's use of his gun.

As for Mehserle's shooting Oscar in the back and murdering him, the BART attorney told the media that it was unintentional: nothing more than a "tragic mistake" and a "terrible error."

Every single one of these claims are bald-faced lies—lies directly contradicted by cell phone videos (all of which show the same basic sequence of events), eye-witness accounts, and other evidence.

* The "fight" that the BART police have used again and again—beginning within hours after Oscar's murder—as a justification for their brutality and murderous violence that followed, was at most a brief shoving match, described by one witness who spoke to Revolution as "an extremely minor" incident which was well over by the time the train pulled into the station. None of the police had a description of anyone involved in a fight, and instead simply racially-profiled Oscar Grant and his Black and Latino friends. People on the BART train took out their cameras and began taking video, not because of any "fight" that was going on between passengers, but only after police began pulling the youth off the train and attacking them.

* Oscar and his friends didn't attack the police—the police attacked them—repeatedly! One cell phone video clearly shows Pirone hit Oscar so hard he sinks to his knees and puts his hands up, an attack that a prominent legal expert not involved in the case has called "completely unprovoked" and "a felony." (And Pirone has not been arrested, nor charged with any crime.) You can see Mehserle hit the youth beside Oscar. You can see the police with their tasers out and pointing at the youth. You can see Mehserle and Pirone on top of Oscar while he lies face down on the platform, underneath at least 400 pounds of cop. But at no time do you see Oscar Grant or any of the other young men on the platform do anything that would warrant any of these attacks, let alone do anything that could justify Mehserle pulling out his gun and shooting it. Throughout this assault, people on the train can be heard in the video, shouting at the police to stop, to let the youth go, saying "that ain't right!" (See youtube.com/user/oscargrantjustice for analysis of videos of Oscar Grant’s Murder done at the People’s Tribunal, March 22, 2009)

* The police say they were "acting in self defense," but all three videos show the group of police in full control of the detained youth who were sitting, lying, or standing, some restrained by zip ties on their limbs. The videos show police with tasers out, beating down Oscar, and finally they show Mehserle shoot him while Grant lay on the ground, hands behind his back.

* The videos—and the whole sequence of events leading up to the shooting and what the police did in its aftermath—show that Oscar Grant's murder was not an unintentional error or a "tragic mistake," 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 guns and tasers, assaults, and illegal detention, and ended with a cold-blooded act of murder. (See, "The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant: What Happened the Morning of January 1, 2009," Revolution #159, March 22, 2009.)

Setting Stage for Whitewash, Coverup—And More Police Murder

BART's Answer turns the truth upside down. This is a naked attempt not only to counter the Grant family's civil rights lawsuit, it's also an attempt to create public opinion before the criminal trial of killer-cop Mehserle (now postponed until May 18) by promoting the fiction that the cops were just doing their jobs that night and Oscar and his friends started the whole thing. As one speaker remarked at a recent BART meeting, it is like the old Groucho Marx line, "Who do you believe, BART, or your lying eyes?" All this is an attempt to pave the way for letting Mehserle off scott-free or with only minor charges.

From the beginning, BART has been trying to cover-up Oscar's murder. Within hours—before any cell phone videos came to light—BART held a press conference. After mouthing the words "condolences," "tragedy" and "regrettable," the BART spokesperson then told the lie which was obediently repeated by the news media in print and on air: someone had reported that two groups of young men were fighting on the train. That BART police were called to the Fruitvale BART station and they "began trying to isolate the young men as they fought" and that there was a "lot of verbal jockeying between the two groups of men" and in the midst of this melee an officer's gun "discharged." It was a "volatile situation."

BART covered up for its police (and their violations of BART's own protocols) time and again. None of the police on the platform when Oscar was killed even reported that there had been a shooting. BART did not immediately demand an interview with Johannes Mehserle even though they were required (Lybarger admonishment) to do so or fire him. BART police made sure the whole train of civilian witnesses left the station before anyone could give statements. BART tried to suppress evidence by confiscating videos, and may still have videos that they are hiding. And the district attorney issued an arrest warrant for Mehserle only after people took to the Oakland streets in rebellion, and only after Mehserle had fled out of the state.

Meanwhile, the system, its courts and its cops were strenuously punishing protesters, deploying hundreds of police at every demonstration, and singling out some with heavy charges—this all before Mehserle was even arrested or charged. (See "Hands Off David! Drop the Charges! Stop the Attack on a Young Revolutionary!") [needs a link]

Why have they gone to such great lengths to lie, cover-up, and deny justice? Why have BART's actions and the actions of the whole power structure—all the way up to President Obama who offered condolences to the four Oakland police recently killed but said nothing about the murder of Oscar Grant—worked to legitimize police brutality and murder?

Because their whole system rests on the violent suppression of the people, Black and oppressed people in particular. The cold truth is that the system racially profiles Black and Latino young men; beats, brutalizes and even kills them on a daily basis; and that in the unlikely event police are charged in court for these killings, they almost always go free. All this—and the whole nationwide epidemic of police brutality and murder—point to the cold truth that brutalizing, terrorizing, and yes murdering oppressed people—especially Black people—is what the police are supposed to do—not to "protect and serve," but to keep people down.

The fact that Johannes Mehserle is even charged with murder is the rare result of the combination of dozens of witnesses, cell phone videos, AND because there was mass, determined protest.

The next step of the case, the preliminary hearing now set for May 18, is two months away. Only mass resistance of growing numbers of people will prevent another injustice from going down.

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