The emphasis on the conviction and sentencing of Johannes Mehserle, the BART police officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man, in Oakland on New Year’s morning, 2009, is actively preventing us from addressing the real systemic sickness that led to this death and many millions gone.
Let’s be clear: The shooting of Oscar Grant in the back by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was horrific, but it was not “crazy.” It was not the act of a rogue cop or even a “poorly trained” one. In reality, the forces of unbridled self-interest and private ownership, interlinked with and supported by white supremacy, have so shaped what it means to be a police officer that Johannes Mehserle was doing little more than what he was set up to do. The job of a police officer is to “preserve order,” and specifically to preserve...
