A Law Firm That Bart Hired Says Much Went Wrong Before & After Oscar Grant's Murder!

Remember the murder of an innocent black man named Oscar Grant on New Year's Eve? It took place during a melee at the Fruitvale Bart Station in Oakland,CA.The person who killed Oscar Grant was a Bart police officer & most people were outraged when they found out the circumstances of his death.It simply did not have to happen!

For the naysayers out there who immediately took the cop's side in this unwarranted tragedy,a law firm that Bart officials hired to look into what went wrong has issued a report stating that the cops bungled the whole incident.It is not even clear whether or not Oscar Grant was ever involved in the fight that the police were responding to.The cold truth is that this bright young man's life was snuffed out for no reason.

Here's more from The Mercury News:

"The BART-commissioned report that found grave errors in how the agency's Police Department reacted before and after Oscar Grant III was killed will have little to no impact on the murder case against former Officer Johannes Mehserle, legal experts and his attorney said.

The report, released Tuesday, details numerous mistakes made by officers and department brass before and after Mehserle shot Grant in the back while the Hayward resident lay facedown Jan. 1 on the platform of BART's Fruitvale station in Oakland.

The report's findings mirror arguments made by Mehserle's attorney, Michael Rains, during a preliminary hearing at which Rains argued his client made a mistake shooting his gun at Grant instead of his Taser.

Rains has attempted to prove that BART officers responding to a call about a fight on a train were overwhelmed by rowdy passengers and that the officers had not been properly trained in the use of Tasers.

David Sklansky, a UC Berkeley law professor, said the report could help Mehserle with his central argument that he was, in part, a victim of organizational mismanagement and made a mistake during a chaotic situation.

"On the one hand, it makes what happened look even more horrible," Sklansky said. "On the other hand, it strengthens the argument by the officer that it was not entirely his fault."

Sklansky said the report could bolster testimony from defense experts who will be brought to the trial to describe the lack of training BART officers receive in using Tasers and dealing with large crowds. The report's findings, however, cannot be used as evidence in Mehserle's murder case, legal experts and Rains said.

The criminal justice system prohibits such reports from being introduced during criminal trials in an effort to encourage the corrections of mistakes that lead to tragic outcomes, said Michael Cardoza, a criminal attorney who has followed the Mehserle case. If such reports were allowed as evidence, Cardoza said, many agencies never would conduct investigations for fear the outcomes later could be used against them during criminal trials."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.