Oakland

We don’t have to go all the way to Colombia or Gaza to see executions of civilians using US tax dollars, we know that. But it is rare that a video of a killing by white police of a black man lying facing down on the ground brings that killing into our own experience. For some, it brings back their own experiences of police brutality.

On New Years Eve, the trains ran late into the night in San Francisco and Oakland. At Fruitvale station in Oakland, transit police pulled people off a train after reports of a fight. Those still on the train caught what happened next on cell phone video footage. Three cops have young men sitting on the platform, their hands behind their backs, possibly handcuffed. They take one of the men, Oscar Grant, and get him face down on the pavement. One of the cops has his knee on Grant’s back. Another stands up, takes his gun from his holster, and fires it into Grant’s back. Grant died that night in the hospital. The video shows the cops then moving other detained young men away from the bleeding body of Grant. Not long after, according to several reports, the police went onto the train and confiscated cell phones from passengers, in what clearly appears to be an attempt to hide or destroy evidence.