Reaction to the Johannes Mehserle Sentencing

Alright. I've been super busy lately, but it's been a big topic of discussion lately how the Johannes Mehserle sentencing went down, and I want to put my two cents in on the subject as well.

1. I am by no means saying that Oscar Grant's character is or should have been on trial in this situation, but my initial emotional reaction was that if he was a wholesome family man that loved his daughter the way his supporters are touting, why wasn't he spending New Years at home with his family, instead of being out with his boys that night?

2. Johannes Mehserle messed up. He did something stupid, and he didn't think - but this isn't so much a strike against him personally as it is a strike against BART police training, if anything. When you're in law enforcement and you're in a delicate situation, you don't hesitate. Hesitating when things could potentially become dangerous could cost your fellow officers and plenty of innocent bystanders their lives, especially when an altercation is occurring in a public place.

3. For people saying that Mehserle's "I thought it was my taser" excuse is flimsy -- have you ever worked any sort of military or law enforcement? Have you ever worked the night shift on New Year's? I have no doubt that the police spent the entire night dealing with rowdy, unruly BART riders and partygoers, probably in the thousands. By the late hour that the call was made leading to the apprehension of Oscar Grant and his friends, I can imagine how tired frazzled all of the officers must have been. They probably didn't have many people able to relieve them on duty, because everyone able to work was already working, and plenty of them probably put in for time off because it was a holiday and they wanted to spend it with their families (see #1).

4. More of an addition to the previous point, it was New Years, and Mehserle was probably dealing with more than his share of belligerent, unruly partygoers under the influence of drugs and alcohol - and Oscar Grant was one of them, according to most accounts. This even includes accounts by Oscar Grant's supporters.

5. As a "person of color", I do not want to be represented by Oscar Grant. I don't want to put him on a pedestal as the next MLK because if this was a case of Martin Luther King Jr. being apprehended on a train platform by racist police officers, he would have let them slap the cuffs on him with his head held high. Oscar Grant isn't a martyr for the new wave of the civil rights movement. There are plenty of white men who do equally knuckleheaded crap (excuse the language) as Oscar Grant was doing, and no one would have objected to a gun being pulled on a "drunk wigger actin' a fool" in the same way they have to Oscar Grant.