Killing of Oscar Grant

Oscar Juliuss Grant III, a 22-year-old Black man from Hayward, California, was killed in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009 by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police Officer Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale BART Station in Oakland. Grant and a group of friends were returning from celebrating in San Francisco when BART officers responded to reports of a fight on their train. Officers detained Grant and several other passengers on the platform. BART Officer Anthony Pirone struck and kneed Grant and forced him face down on the platform. Mehserle then drew his sidearm and shot Grant once in the back. Grant was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland, where he died later that day.

The shooting was recorded by multiple bystanders on cell phones, and the footage was broadcast on local television and uploaded to the internet, drawing widespread public attention. According to the Wikipedia account, several hundred thousand people viewed the videos within days. Following release of the footage, protests took place in Oakland, including a January 7, 2009 march that began peacefully at the Fruitvale station but was followed after dark by looting, arson, vandalism, and confrontations with police in riot gear; roughly 120 people were arrested that evening.

On January 12, 2009, Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff filed a murder complaint against Mehserle, who had left the Bay Area; he was arrested on January 13 near Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Mehserle waived extradition and pleaded not guilty. On January 30, 2010, prosecutors indicted him on a charge of second-degree murder. The trial was moved to Los Angeles County due to concerns about an impartial jury in Alameda County. Mehserle testified that he believed he was holding his Taser rather than his firearm when he fired. On July 8, 2010, a jury convicted Mehserle of involuntary manslaughter and acquitted him of second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter. Renewed protests followed the verdict, again including some looting and property destruction after dark.

On November 5, 2010, Mehserle was sentenced to two years in prison, with credit for time served, after the judge overturned a firearm-use enhancement. He was released on parole on June 13, 2011, having served roughly eleven months. His 2012 appeal to the California Court of Appeal was unsuccessful, and the California Supreme Court declined further review later that year.

Civil rights attorney John Burris filed a $25 million wrongful-death claim against BART on Grant's family's behalf. BART settled with Grant's daughter and mother for a combined $2.8 million in 2011 and separately settled claims brought by several of Grant's friends. A related internal BART investigation found that Officer Anthony Pirone had struck and kneed Grant, contributing to injuries documented in his autopsy; Pirone and Officer Marysol Domenici were later terminated by BART, with Domenici eventually reinstated after labor arbitration. The case is widely cited as an early catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement and was later dramatized in the 2013 film "Fruitvale Station."