California DA to Reopen Oscar Grant Case

By Michael Williams, San Francisco Chronicle

07 October 20

 

lameda County prosecutors said Monday they would reopen their investigation into the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer more than a decade ago, a stunning decision that came amid a national reckoning over police shootings of Black people.

“We are re-opening our investigation,” Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said in a statement. “I have assigned a team of lawyers to look back into the circumstances that caused the death of Oscar Grant.”

O’Malley did not say what part of the shooting at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland she would re-examine. Johannes Mehserle, the BART officer who pulled the trigger on New Year’s Day in 2009, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2010 and served a jail sentence. Mehserle had said he thought he was shocking Grant with a Taser, not shooting his pistol.

Other officers involved in the arrest and shooting were not charged, a continued source of grievance for Grant’s family. One officer, Anthony Pirone, pulled the 22-year-old Grant from a train aggressively and knelt on his neck before he was shot, according to court testimony and video of the incident.

Pirone was fired but never charged in the case, which was captured on video and became an early rallying point for calls to end police brutality against Black people.

O’Malley’s announcement came as Grant’s family gathered Monday in front of the Fruitvale BART Station to demand O’Malley charge Pirone.

“Oscar was denied his full justice,” said Grant’s mother, the Rev. Wanda Johnson, under a mural of her son at the station where he was killed. “… I am calling for the district attorney to bring charges against (Pirone) and charge him for his actions that escalated — instead of de-escalating the situation — and caused the loss of my son’s life.”

After O’Malley’s announcement, Johnson said she was “grateful that O’Malley re-opened the case, that she kept her word from years ago when she said she would.”

Johnson questioned whether that decision would have come had the family not held the news conference Monday.

“I think maybe she thought that we might’ve forgotten,” Johnson said. “Why else would you make this announcement, 11 years later?”

Johnson said she wants Pirone to be charged with accessory to murder.

Pirone’s lawyer Bill Rapoport died in 2018. Pirone did not answer a phone number listed under his name.

The incident began on a BART train. Grant was on his way home from San Francisco, surrounded by friends and packed among New Year’s revelers, when he fought with another passenger. Police were called, and Grant and four friends were detained by Pirone at Fruitvale.

Court testimony and video showed that Pirone pulled Grant and his friends off the train so aggressively that other riders loudly objected. Pirone got physical at least two more times with Grant, kneeing him and pulling him violently to the concrete platform. At one point, apparently angry at being called a profane name, Pirone leaned in close to Grant and shouted back at him, “Bitch-ass n—, right? Bitch-ass n—, right?”

After Pirone and Grant shouted profanities at each other, Pirone told Mehserle — who had arrived after driving to the station in a patrol car — to arrest Grant for resisting, announcing that “this motherf—er is going to jail.”

After being instructed to arrest Grant and one of his friends, Mehserle struggled to handcuff Grant while forcing him from his knees onto his chest. After about 10 seconds, Mehserle — who later testified he feared Grant might pull a gun, though he was unarmed — unholstered his service pistol, stood up and fired a single shot into Grant’s back.

A BART internal investigation found Pirone lied repeatedly to investigators, telling them he felt he was “fighting for my life” when in fact he was the aggressor.

“Pirone was, in large part, responsible for setting the events in motion that created a chaotic and tense situation on the platform, setting the stage, even if inadvertent, for the shooting of Oscar Grant,” the 2009 report concluded.

The report cited Pirone’s “repeated, unreasonable and unnecessary use of force,” his “manifest lack of veracity” and his use of the word “n—” while arguing with Grant in recommending the officer’s firing.

Attorney John Burris, who has represented family members and friends of Oscar Grant in multiple federal civil rights lawsuits, acknowledged that this is an unusual move for O’Malley, who in the past was not known for aggressively prosecuting police officers. Last month, O’Malley charged a San Leandro police officer with voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of Steven Taylor at a Walmart earlier this year. That officer, Jason Fletcher, was the first officer in Alameda County to be charged in an on-duty shooting since Mehserle.

Burris has long advocated for Pirone to be prosecuted for use of force, because he took Grant’s friend Michael Greer to the ground with a leg sweep and got physical with Grant multiple times.

“I don’t see her (O’Malley) prosecuting (Pirone) for murder,” Burris said. “The question is whether the statute of limitations had run on the issue of force — the beating of these two guys.

“Pirone is the instigator of this entire event. It was his actions that caused the entire series of events to occur.”