Local News

OAKLAND (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― A former Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer was charged with murder for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in a racially charged case that again set off protests ending in violence and triggered a bomb scare at the home of the ex-officer's family.

Oakland police said 18 people were arrested Wednesday night after a peaceful protest of the BART shooting turned violent with a splinter group going on a window-smashing rampage. It was a week ago Wednesday that a similar protest had also turned violent.

Elsewhere, about 50 people were evacuated from their Napa homes Wednesday night after the parents of the arrested ex-officer, Johannes Mehserle, found two suspicious packages on their porch. After days of receiving threats, the family feared the items could be explosives.

Earlier Wednesday, Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff announced that he had made the rare decision to file a murder charge against a police officer for an on-duty incident.

"At this point, what I feel the evidence indicates, is an unlawful killing done by an intentional act and from the evidence we have there's nothing that would mitigate that to something lower than a murder," Orloff said at a news conference.

He would not speculate on whether the charge against the 27-year-old Mehserle would end up being first-degree murder or second-degree murder.

Newly released court documents alleged that Mehserle, who was arrested Tuesday night in Douglas County, Nevada, shot 22-year-old Oscar Grant III while Grant had his hands behind his back and another officer was kneeling on his neck.

Witnesses said Mehserle fired into Grant's back while the man was lying facedown on a train platform at BART's Fruitvale station in Oakland. Grant and others had been pulled off a train by police officers after reports of fighting, as New Year's revelers were shuttling home.

The incident was captured on amateur video cameras and widely viewed on TV and the Internet.

Allegations that Grant's hands were behind his back and another officer was kneeling on him were contained in an Oakland police officer's request to issue an arrest warrant. It said it appeared from amateur video of the incident that "Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant while Grant was restrained and unarmed."

Mehserle waived extradition during a brief court appearance in Minden, Nevada, and quickly returned to California, arriving at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin around 2 p.m. Wednesday.

Alameda County Sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson said Mehserle was "very quiet" and cooperative as he was booked. Because Mehserle is a former police officer and the case is so high-profile, he was placed in protective custody.

Mehserle was being held without bail and was likely to be arraigned in Alameda County Superior Court on Thursday afternoon, lawyers said.

Mehserle had surrendered without incident at a family friend's house in an upscale neighborhood on the east shore of Lake Tahoe, authorities said. Officers had contacted his attorney, Christopher Miller, to advise him an arrest warrant had been issued.
 
Miller, who accompanied Mehserle to court, later told reporters that his client would be exonerated when all the facts became known.

"As this case moves forward through the justice system and all of the circumstances of that chaotic night become clear, I fully expect Mr. Mehserle will be cleared of the charges against him," Miller said.

"This case is not just about a video," Miller said of the charge against Mehserle. "He's a fine young man and I'm priviledged to represent him."

The shooting has inflamed long-running tensions between law enforcement authorities and many African-American residents and black community leaders, who have berated BART officials at several public meetings since the incident thirteen days ago.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets calling for the prosecution of Mehserle, with one rally last week spiraling into violence and resulting in more than 120 arrests and 45 businesses damaged in downtown Oakland.
 
Nearly 1,000 demonstrators again gathered Wednesday evening outside Oakland City Hall for a rally and march. They listened to preachers, community activists and others who urged a peaceful demonstration and demanded justice for Grant.

"Let Oscar Grant be the beginning of the end of police brutality," said Dereka Blackmon, the co-founder of Citizens Against Police Executions (CAPE) and one of the protest's organizers.

Oakland police officers and Alameda County Sheriff's deputies in riot gear guarded buildings in the area, with roughly half the storefront windows in a nearby three-block stretch boarded up.

The protest was mostly peaceful before a small group splintered off after most of the people had left. They went on a window-breaking rampage through downtown's City Center Mall area, smashing glass at more
than 15 businesses and damaging windshields of about 30 cars.

Police spokesman Jeff Thomason said three people were arrested during the main demonstration, two for possessing "Molotov cocktails" and one for attempted assault with a deadly weapon. Fifteen demonstrators were arrested in the aftermath of the protest, mostly for vandalism, he said.

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums had earlier hoped that the day's legal developments would "bring down the temperature" on the streets of his city. "My hope is that people will come together in a peaceful demonstration. We can now be relieved that the wheels of justice are moving forward." 
 
John Burris, the attorney for Grant's family, called the filing of a murder charge in the case "terrific" and said it was "consistent with the evidence I have seen."

He indicated that Grant's mother, Wanda Johnson, was "happy and pleased that an arrest has occurred, however it does not bring her son back."

Jack Bryson of Hayward, whose sons, Jackie, 21, and Nigel, 19, were with Grant when he was killed, said their family also was happy that Mehserle was charged. He said his sons and others friends with Grant that night remained traumatized from the shooting.

Douglas County, where Mehserle's arrest occurred, is 15 miles south of Carson City in northwestern Nevada and includes Lake Tahoe and Carson Valley.

Undersheriff Paul Howell said Mehserle went to Nevada for his own safety.

"He just wanted to get out of the Bay Area due to the magnitude of the incident," Howell said. "He wasn't trying to run."

"There's no evidence that he was ever a flight risk," added Oakland Police Chief Wayne Tucker, who said Mehserle had been under surveillance by Oakland police with help from the Douglas County Sheriff's office and the FBI.

"It's mere happenstance that he was out of state" at the time of his arrest, Tucker explained.

Mehserle's attorney reiterated that point, noting his client had been in Nevada for a few days to get away from the pressures of it all, and there was no effort to avoid arrest.

"As you are all aware there were some death threats, significant death threats, made against him and his family," the lawyer said.

The latest threat came Wednesday evening, when police and sheriff's deputies in Napa said Mehserle's parents found two strange packages on their porch that were feared could contain explosives.
 
Bomb squad officers came to the scene and evacuated the neighborhood while trying to determine the contents of the packages. When authorities could not determine what was in the packages, they destroyed them. The residents were then allowed to return home, Sgt. Don Honey said.

Mehserle had refused to talk to BART investigators before resigning his position last week. The transit authority passed on details of its internal investigation to the district attorney's office on Monday, which prosecutors said led to the charge.

Michael Rains, a former police officer who has represented cops as a lawyer since 1979, called the murder charge against Mehserle "extremely rare." Rains said he knew of no similar prosecutions in Northern California in the 45 years he has been either a police officer or a lawyer.

Rains said that convicting a police officer of murder for firing a weapon while on duty could prove difficult. He said there are many laws and Supreme Court cases to "discourage second-guessing and hindsighting of their actions." Rains also said that juries typically view police officers favorably.

"Police officers usually have a leg up in the jury box going to trial," Rains said.

According to the Oakland police department, no officer-involved shootings since 2004 resulted in a firing or criminal charges against the officers. A number of investigations from 2008 remain unresolved.

Grant was the first person killed by BART police since 2001, when a 42-year-old man was shot at a station in nearby Hayward, officials said. The earlier shooting was deemed justifiable.

BART Board President Thomas Blalock said in a statement that the investigation "shows that no one is above the law, but everyone is entitled to due process of the law."

Some community leaders remained sketipcal, however.

Oakland City Councilwoman Desley Brooks, who led a group of dozens of community members who met with Orloff last week to urge that Mehserle be prosecuted, said, "I have no confidence in the district attorney and I will watch him every step of the way."

She said the charges against Mehserle "should have happened two
weeks ago."

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