Crime

10th Anniversary Vigil of Oscar Grant’s Slaying By BART Policeman at Fruitvale BART

Published

7 years ago

January 3, 2019

Tatiana Grant stood with her grandmother, Wanda Johnson, at the vigil for her father at Fruitvale Station on Tuesday afternoon. Photo by Amir Saadiq.

About 200 people came out for the vigil marking the 10th anniversary of the death of Oscar Grant III by a BART policeman on New Year’s Day in 2009.
Just a couple of hours into the new year, Grant and some friends were on their way home when a scuffle broke out on the train.
Restrained, lying face down on the platform while outraged passengers recorded the chaos on their cell phones, Grant was shot by Johannes Mehserle and died at the hospital. Galvanized by the injustice and sharing the grief of Grant’s family, community protests and organizing forced the prosecution of Mehserle, leading to his conviction for involuntary manslaughter in 2011.
At each annual vigil, members of the family, including Grant’s daughter Tatiana, now 14, gather at the station that they are lobbying to be renamed in Grant’s memory.
“We are claiming that,” Wanda Johnson told the crowd and BART appears to be ready to unveil a mural in March.
Grant’s friends and poets gave Spoken Word tributes and community leaders like District 3 Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney and Cat Brooks of the Anti- Police Terror Project also expressed their support.
BART director Lateefah Simon told the crowd that Grant’s death inspired her to seek office.
Among the speakers Tuesday were Grant’s mother and Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, who along with his wife, Beatrice, took up the mantle of the Oscar Grant Foundation until Wanda Johnson’s grief subsided.
Since then, Cephus Johnson’s Love Not Blood Campaign has offered succor and support
to the families of people across the Bay Area and the nation who have lost a loved one to police terror.
The martyrs are well known like Trayvon Martin of Sanford. Fla., in 2012, Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo. In 2014, Mario Woods in San Francisco in 2015 and most recently Agustin Gonsalez, killed in November 2018 in Hayward.
Web site information from the San Francisco Chronicle and Essence magazine contributed to this report.

OAKLAND POST

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of December 24 – 30, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – December 24 – 30, 2025

Published

6 days ago

December 25, 2025

Oakland Post

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Alameda County

Oakland Council Expands Citywide Security Cameras Despite Major Opposition

In a 7-1 vote in favor of the contract, with only District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife voting no, the Council agreed to maintain its existing network of 291 cameras and add 40 new “pan-tilt-zoom cameras.”

Published

1 week ago

December 21, 2025

Oakland Post

At the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, Flock Safety introduces new public safety technology – Amplified Intelligence, a suite of AI-powered tools designed to improve law enforcement investigations. Courtesy photo.

By Post Staff

The Oakland City Council this week approved a $2.25 million contract with Flock Safety for a mass surveillance network of hundreds of security cameras to track vehicles in the city.

In recent weeks hundreds of local residents have spoken against the camera system, raising concerns that data will be shared with immigration authorities and other federal agencies at a time when mass surveillance is growing across the country with little regard for individual rights.

The Flock network, supported by the Oakland Police Department, has the backing of residents and councilmembers who see it as an important tool to protect public safety.

“This system makes the Department more efficient as it allows for information related to disruptive/violent criminal activities to be captured … and allows for precise and focused enforcement,” OPD wrote in its proposal to City Council.

According to OPD, police made 232 arrests using data from Flock cameras between July 2024 and November of this year.

Based on the data, police say they recovered 68 guns, and utilizing the countywide system, they have found 1,100 stolen vehicles.

However, Flock’s cameras cast a wide net. The company’s cameras in Oakland last month captured license plate numbers and other information from about 1.4 million vehicles.

Speaking at Tuesday’s Council meeting, Fife was critical of her colleagues for signing a contract with a company that has been in the national spotlight for sharing data with federal agencies.

Flock’s cameras – which are automated license plate readers – have been used in tracking people who have had abortions, monitoring protesters, and aiding in deportation roundups.

“I don’t know how we get up and have several press conferences talking about how we are supportive of a sanctuary city status but then use a vendor that has been shown to have a direct relationship with (the U.S.) Border Control,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Several councilmembers who voted in favor of the contract said they supported the deal as long as some safeguards were written into the Council’s resolution.

“We’re not aiming for perfection,” said District 1 Councilmember Zac Unger. “This is not Orwellian facial recognition technology — that’s prohibited in Oakland. The road forward here is to add as many amendments as we can.”

Amendments passed by the Council prohibit OPD from sharing camera data with any other agencies for the purpose of “criminalizing reproductive or gender affirming healthcare” or for federal immigration enforcement. California state law also prohibits the sharing of license plate reader data with the federal government, and because Oakland’s sanctuary city status, OPD is not allowed to cooperate with immigration authorities.

A former member of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission has sued OPD, alleging that it has violated its own rules around data sharing.

So far, OPD has shared Flock data with 50 other law enforcement agencies.