Oakland shooting fuels anger over police brutality

Protesters yell during a demonstration against the shooting death of Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2009. Grant was shot and killed by a police officer after an altercation on a BART train station platform in Oakland on New Year’s Day. (AP photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Jason Dearen and Terry Collins

OAKLAND, Calif. — The videotaped killing of an unarmed black man by a transit police officer here has inflamed long-running tensions between police and many African American residents.

Public outrage at the New Year’s Day slaying of 22-year-old Oscar Grant intensified as grainy footage of the shooting played repeatedly on television and the Internet, while the officer remained free and not charged with any crime.

Dozens of black community leaders and residents berated Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officials for hours at a meeting last Thursday, the morning after demonstrators torched cars, smashed store windows and threw bottles at officers in downtown Oakland.

More than 100 people were arrested and about 300 businesses were damaged last Wednesday. Three of the people arrested during the violence were arraigned Jan. 9 on various charges, including vandalism, arson and firearm possession.

To many, Grant’s death is the latest in a series of incidents — from a deadly shootout with the Black Panthers in the 1960s to the fatal shooting of another armed man in July — that have fueled mistrust of the police.

“Oakland, unfortunately, has had a history of treating the African American community unfairly,” said George Holland Sr., an attorney who heads the Oakland chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “The community has a great distrust for police officers because they feel they can’t be punished.”

Harry Williams, an Oakland minister, viewed last Wednesday’s violent street protest in the context of that perceived injustice.

“People are just fed up, and Oscar Grant is the match that lit up the dynamite,” he said. Many residents perceive the police as “keepers of the gate instead of servants of the people,” he added.

Grant was the first person killed by BART police since 2001 when a 42-year-old man was shot at a station in the nearby city of Hayward, said spokesman Jim Allison.