Mehserle weeps: 'I didn't think I had my gun'

[alp227]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(06-25) 14:44 PDT LOS ANGELES -- Former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle wept on the witness stand at his murder trial today as he testified that he had killed Oscar Grant by mistake.

Mehserle, 28, said he was trying to use his Taser to subdue Grant on the platform of the Fruitvale Station in Oakland early Jan. 1, 2009, for allegedly resisting police following a fight on a train. He didn't realize he had shot Grant, 22, until he looked at his right hand after firing and saw he was holding his pistol, the former officer said under questioning by defense attorney Michael Rains.

"I didn't think I had my gun," Mehserle told the jury in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. "I remember the pop. It wasn't very loud. It wasn't like a gunshot, and I remember wondering what went wrong with the Taser.

"I remember looking to my right side and seeing my gun in my right hand," Mehserle said. "I didn't know what to think. I just thought it shouldn't have been there."

Rains asked Mehserle what he remembered after that, and the former officer, by now crying, struggled with the words. "I remember Mr. Grant said, 'You shot me,' " he said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/25/BA371E4VGE.DTL

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The judge in this case had to call a brief recess after someone heckled Mehserle and later got arrested. Mehserle pretty much repeated his usual storyline: I wanted to Tase Grant, and Grant was loosening up from me and reaching in his pocket, so that's why I had to shoot at him.

Also, today's Matier & Ross column reports about an incident on BART where an officer Tased a man who evaded fare.

[jtuck004]

1. This is your Taser. This is your gun. This is for stunning, and this is for...... n.t.

[saigon68]

13. This is my rifle this is my gun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kU0XCVey_U&feature=related

For those who don't know what the fuck we are talking about

[jtuck004]

16. Thank you. For more than just the response. n.t.

[bluerum]

2. Just the kind of stable grip on reality that all our law enforcement people should have.

[onethatcares]

3. "I didn't think I had my gun"

jeez, think how bad he'd have felt if he pulled his taser when he needed his firearm.

[Grinchie]

4. That says it all.. Highly trained professionals! Next stop, Xe!

As if 5 cops, some kneeling on the neck of Grant crushed face first into the concrete platform wasn't enough to "subdue" him, after they took him off the bench where he was talking with the other prisoners and threw him to the floor.

This is a bluff, and I guess his lawyer are hoping that the videos all over the internet and the YouTubes are never seen by the jury.

This guy Mehserle is going down, or Oakland is going to explode in rage. This atrocity must be punished or there will be hell to pay when the sheeple wake up in a combined rage like they did in L.A. after the Rodney King trial.

Warning This video will make your blood curdle...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR_B38Vh6QE

[davidinalameda]

6. have you ever ridden BART?

just curious

[Grinchie]

7. More times than you can imagine...

May I ask the same of you?

You taking offense on me posting the eyewitness videos, or are you trying to imply that BART is somehow a seething cesspool of criminal elements, which it is most definately not.

Bart is the only thing that makes living in the East Bay Bearable. How many times have you driven over the Bay Bridge that's been under construction for the past decade. How did you cope when the Eye Beam failed unexpectedly and they shut down the bridge for a few days?

How surprised were you when one day a 35 mile an hour S curve was installed on the bridge at the entrance of the Treasure Island Tunnel?

95% of the other trips across the bay I took BART and enjoyed every minute of it, as I was able to see first hand the Empty Commercial and Industrial complexes grow empty and unused, but never did I see any so called Growth.

[davidinalameda]

10. a few times

Fruitvale was my usual station; I lived in the area for over five years

I know a little bit about that area

I wasn't surprised when this happened

[EFerrari]

11. I commuted from San Francisco to teach night school in downtown San Jose

for about a year. And that meant I was taking some of the last trains out of Fremont all the way into the city. I never had any problem at all except being in danger of falling asleep.

[Grinchie]

18. Did you by any chance get to see the Freda exhibit at MOMA?

It was truly fantastic...

[Politicalboi]

5. So complying and laying on the ground

Is still reason to get tased? WTF? I hope they find him guilty. These asshole cops tase EVERYONE these days. What if Oscar died from the tasing? Would that have been ok? I don't believe his story. And I hope the jury doesn't either.

[Fastcars]

12. Tasing as punishment

I think the cop meant to taze him as an example for the rest of the crowd and to adminster a bit of "out of channels" punishment. I can't imagine any way the cop would have thought he could get away with shooting a compliant person who was simply talking back to him with a crowd of onlookers that were obviously filming it.

It was a mistake, a criminally negligent mistake, but a mistake none-the-less.I am not sure what punishment is called for, I guess a conviction of criminally negligent homicide/manslaughter. The fact that he intended to taze someone as a form of extra-judicial punishment should mean some kind of criminal liability.

[Bert]

14. How about life in prison

There's some criminal liability.

[bemildred]

8. Dang, I think he's lying. nt

[dickthegrouch]

9. Oscar level performance /nt

[michreject]

15. Bullshit

The taser is worn on the opposite side so as not to confuse the two.

[Downtown Hound]

17. Oh, so sad

Maybe if you hadn't tried to tase a handcuffed man on his stomach, you wouldn't be in this situation now, would you?

[boppers]

19. They look different, feel different, weigh different, and have a different profile.

If you can't tell the difference between something that subdues and something that kills, we have a place that our society puts people for that kind of lack of judgement.

[Poll_Blind]

20. +1 They are specifically designed that way, too.

PB