(NNPA)—Patrick Lynch, do you remember Oscar Grant? And if you do, Mr. “leader” of the New York Police Department Union, why do you pretend not to understand the reaction that many African-American people have to the police killing of Black men? The official reaction to those killings and the arrogance with which many police officers (read Darren Wilson in Ferguson) respond to the fact that they have snuffed out a life.
If you don’t remember Oscar Grant, Mr. Lynch, I do. He was executed on the first day of the same month that President Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, ordered from a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train in Oakland, Calif., and compliantly sitting on the platform when he and a group of friends were roughed up, and he was shot. Why? Because his murderer, Johannes Mehserle, said he mistook his Glock gun (with a weight of at least 28 ounces and perhaps as many as 38) for a Taser (which weighs seven ounces).
Just days after the killing, on Jan. 6, 2009, the San Francisco Chronicle described this fiction as “nonsense,” not only because firing a Taser has an entirely different protocol than firing a Glock, but also as noted by The Chronicle a Taser has to be turned on and off, and a Glock does not. Furthermore, Mesherle had used his Taser earlier in the same evening he killed Oscar Grant. He should have known the difference.
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