Justice for Oscar Grant

The potential release this weekend of the BART officer charged with murder in the New Year's Day killing of Oscar Grant provoked peaceful protests across Oakland and the Bay Area. Organizers called for the continued detention of the BART officer accused in the killing, as well as for the arrest of the other BART officers present when Oscar Grant was shot once in the back in the early hours of 2009. Dozens of stunned BART passengers watched and filmed the scene.

According to his lawyer, BART officer Johannes Mehserle thought he was using his Taser, not his firearm. Seeing Mehserle's video response after the shot is fired, this defense will likely hold and win him a lighter manslaughter conviction.

As for the other BART officers at the shooting, they will be harder to convict, if they get charged at all. Another angle of the killing on YouTube shows a different officer punching Grant in the face before Grant is thrown to the ground. That officer could be charged with misconduct. But if Mehserle's defense stands in court, it probably would relieve the other officers' culpability for Oscar Grant's actual death.

So what is justice for Oscar Grant? Suppose Mehserle goes to jail and Grant's family wins a settlement with BART and get millions of dollars in a wrongful death suit. These scenarios seem both just and likely. But real justice for Oscar Grant will come when we figure out how to prevent another death like Oscar Grant's.

There are a lot of answers to this question. But one strategy that the massive popular uprising taking place on the streets of the Bay Area could enlist is to demand a ban on the Tasers used by BART cops, even by all the Bay Area police force. If Mehserle's defense holds, then the presence of the Taser caused Grant's death. Without the Taser on his belt, Mehserle would have never have mistaken his firearm for anything but a firearm.

Since 2001, Tasers have killed well over 300 people in the United States; most of the dead weren't even armed. The question is not one of restraint by police officers, but a question of the continued use of unjustified force against an unarmed populace. Don't police have batons and handcuffs for a reason? Can't they contain us with traditional means? Where did the state get the right to shock its citizens into submission?

Perhaps the street demonstrations in Oakland, San Francisco and across the country should shift their message to banning Tasers. It's clear that poor police judgment, gumshoe laziness, and human error have resulted in too many unjust deaths related to police Taser use.

Justice for Oscar Grant will mean money for his family and jail for his killer. But the larger justice will occur when the organizing in the streets pushes for more than what is already likely to happen. If the people in the streets begin to demand a ban on Tasers and a higher burden of justification on the police officers who continue to use the stun guns, their voice will be heard. The organizers can capitalize on the unity behind a common message and the community's disgust behind Grant's death. With everybody pushing, they should be able to force a meaningful debate, if not change a fatal police policy.