Jan. 1, 2009: 15 years ago, January 1 2009, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle [...]
15 years ago, January 1 2009, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle murdered Oscar Grant III at Oakland’s Fruitvale Station. Outrage over the killing and Mehserle’s lenient sentence sparked the 2009 anti-police terror movement, a precursor to the Black Lives Matter movement
After celebrating New Year’s Eve in San Francisco, Grant had been heading home to Hayward on BART. Around 2AM, a fight broke out on the train, and police were called. When they arrived, the fight had already been broken up by other passengers
Unsure who had been involved in the fight, police began violently pulling out passengers they suspected may have been, including Grant. Officer Anthony Pirone, who later lied that Grant had attacked him, punched Grant in the face, kneed him in the head, and called him the n-word
As Grant pleaded with the officers not to use their tasers, Pirone knelt on his neck. While attempting to handcuff Grant, Officer Mehserle unholstered his gun and shot him in the back. Grant yelled, “You shot me! I got a four-year-old daughter!”
The next week saw a wave of protests and riots, which escalated into the 2009 anti-police movement, a precursor to Occupy Oakland and Black Lives Matter. Mehserle was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and was released from prison in 2011; Pirone never faced charges
In 2011, Occupy Oakland activists honored Grant by renaming Downtown Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza “Oscar Grant Plaza,” a name which remains in use
