Oakland Prepares for Response to Trial Verdict
- June 30, 2010
Officials in Oakland are girding for the verdict in a closely watched trial of a former transit police officer accused of murdering an unarmed black man on a subway platform on New Year’s Day 2009.
The shooting — which was captured on cellphone video and widely disseminated on the Internet — set off riots in downtown Oakland, and city officials seem wary of a repeat as closing arguments begin Thursday in Los Angeles, where the trial was moved.
Last week, Mayor Ronald V. Dellums and Chief Anthony W. Batts of the police took the unusual step of issuing a public message urging both calm and precaution after the verdict is announced, asking residents to park their cars in a “secure location” and remove large trash receptacles.
“We understand that the community is grieving, and we are in this together,” Mr. Dellums and Chief Batts said on the city’s Web site The Web site includes a list of “places to cool off and express yourself in positive ways.”
The police, meanwhile, have been put on alert, with vacations canceled and officers practicing anti-riot maneuvers. Commanders have also been running “tabletop” drills with representatives of several local agencies. “We have to be braced for something really bad,” said Holly J. Joshi, a police spokeswoman.
The former officer, Johannes Mehserle, who is white, was not a member of the Oakland Police Department but rather the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department, which patrols the region’s subways. Mr. Mehserle, 28, is accused of murdering Oscar Grant III, 22, a butcher’s apprentice who had been removed from a BART train after a fight between two groups returning from New Year’s festivities in San Francisco. Mr. Grant was shot in the back as he lay on a platform.
Mr. Mehserle, who resigned after the shooting, says Mr. Grant’s death was a terrible accident. But his explanation, that he mistook his own police sidearm for a Taser, has been met with skepticism by some of Oakland’s black residents, who have a long, uneasy relationship with local law enforcement.
There have also been some ominous signs on city streets, including graffiti with messages like “Mehserle must die” spray-painted on a local bus stop. Latoya Phillips, 25, a student of mass communications at California State University, East Bay said she had seen similar graffiti in her neighborhood.
“I understand the rage,” Ms. Phillips said. “The person who wrote this is coming from the concept of ‘an eye for an eye,’ ” voicing the opinion of those who were outraged and offended by the shooting.”
What many here seem to fear is a reprise of the reaction to the Rodney King verdict in 1992, which included riots in Los Angeles after the officers accused of beating Mr. King were acquitted.
City officials stress that many of those who rioted after Mr. Grant’s shooting were not Oakland residents.
“Beware of ‘outside agitators’ who are not from Oakland and who will try to incite violence,” reads a message on the city’s Web site. “Oakland is our home, it’s not theirs.”