01-29) 19:14 PST OAKLAND --
BART's investigation into a police officer's fatal shooting of an
unarmed rider was plagued with problems from the start, a Chronicle
investigation has found.BART police allowed a train full of witnesses to pull out of the
Fruitvale Station in Oakland early New Year's Day after Officer
Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant, then made little effort to contact
the witnesses as they got off at other stations.None of the seven officers at Fruitvale radioed that an
officer-involved shooting had taken place. Supervisors sent to the
Fruitvale Station initially were in the dark, while officers at
stations down the line did not know to expect a train full of witnesses.A key video showing that another officer on the station platform
struck Grant two minutes before he was shot was available to BART, but
police did not start a full investigation into the officer's actions
until a TV station aired the footage Jan. 23.BART has failed to provide basic and important information about the
case to the public, even while promising transparency. The vacuum has
been filled by attorney John Burris, who is seeking $25 million for
Grant's family, and by speculation over amateur video footage broadcast
on television and the Internet.BART's response has been hamstrung by the agency's inability to say
why Grant was shot as he lay facedown - or even if the shooting was
intentional or accidental. BART officials say that is the fault of
Mehserle, who refused to speak to criminal investigators and then quit
before he was forced to talk to BART's internal affairs division. He
has since been charged with murder.Among the information that BART has withheld is that Grant was shot
just after he had been told he was being arrested for resisting an
officer, two sources familiar with the investigation told The
Chronicle. BART has not said what Grant allegedly did to deserve the
arrest.On Thursday, conceding that they had lost the public's confidence in
the investigation, BART officials said they will hire an outside law
firm or public agency to decide whether any additional officers should
be disciplined, a job normally handled by a police department's
internal affairs division."Even if we came to the right conclusion," said Joel Keller, a member of the BART Board of Directors, "there would be mistrust."
Chaos on the platform
BART has not discussed what happened on the Fruitvale Station
platform in detail. But a Chronicle review that draws on documents,
video footage and dozens of interviews paints a picture of a chaotic,
complex scene.About 2 a.m., riders reported a fight as a Dublin-Pleasanton train
left the West Oakland station. Grant, 22, of Hayward, was in the
train's lead car with his friends after a brief New Year's Eve trip to
San Francisco.BART dispatched officers to Fruitvale to intercept the train.
Mehserle, 27, who had been on the BART police force for two years, had
to drive with his partner from the West Oakland station. There, a
teenage boy with a semiautomatic pistol had fled from police and jumped
off the station platform, breaking several bones.Another officer was already at Fruitvale - Tony Pirone, 36, a former
Marine who came to BART four years ago from the police force at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. CONTINUE READING...
