Video Evidence
The incident and subsequent direct evidence of the shooting was documented by video cameras held by passengers on the train idling next to the platform, as police detained Grant and a number of other men police suspected of being involved in the disturbance. Several witnesses testified during the preliminary hearing for Mehserle's trial that they began recording because they believed BART officers were acting too aggressively. These videos were made available through television news and internet video.
Oakland attorney John Burris says BART confiscated numerous cell phone images that he believes contains additional evidence of the killing. Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff said video confiscated by BART was useful in bringing the murder charge against Mehserle. Witnesses at the scene also claim police attempted to confiscate cameras. These claims have not been confirmed by BART police.
Orloff, the district attorney, said that several passenger videos that have not been made public were "very helpful" in the investigation.
On January 2, KTVU aired a video by an anonymous passenger who submitted a cell phone video of the actual shooting.
On January 23, KTVU aired a cell-phone video which appeared to show a second officer punching Grant in the face prior to the shooting. In late February, KRON 4 aired a clip of a video showing a different angle of this altercation. In the report, former Alameda district attorney, Michael Cardoza, told KRON that Pirone appears to be attempting to restrain Grant by grabbing his head and pushing him down. He also said that Grant appeared to be reaching for Pirone's gun. Burris responded by calling it a "ridiculous assumption" since Grant was trying to resolve the problem.
BART spokesperson Linton Johnson described the surveillance footage from the Fruitvale platform cameras as "benign" and said the platform cameras had recorded some of the incident, but did not include the actual shooting.
There has been varying commentary on the video evidence. The trainers said the scene as shown in the video moments before the shooting would be as important to understanding what happened as the shooting itself. "The four officers have to be operating under a high level of stress given the relatively confined setting and the people on the BART train who are expressing, in a very loud vocal fashion, their displeasure with the officers' actions," said Frank Borelli, a use of force expert in Maryland. "Those officers, should things go bad for them, are vastly outnumbered by a group of people who have already voiced their unhappiness with the police."
After viewing the shooting from multiple angles, police use-of-force expert Roy Bedard changed his mind and commented: "I hate to say this, it looks like an execution to me" and "It really looks bad for the officer." University of San Francisco law professor Robert Talbot said the videos could support a claim of an accidental shooting: "Nothing about his body looks murderous." Attorney Harland Braun, who won acquittal for an officer in the Rodney King beating, noted that video evidence can be deceptive, and doesn't show what happened before or after an incident.
Read more about this topic: BART Police Shooting Of Oscar Grant
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