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BART Shooting Research Paper

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Johannes Mehserle unintentionally shot and killed Oscar Grant. He was on duty as a train officer for BART transportation and was on alert for those who had celebrated New Year’s Eve. The shooting occurred at the Fruitvale train station on January 1st, 2009. At the station, a fight broke out in one of the trains and when the train stopped the fight started again outside of the train at one of the stops. While they were fighting on the train the BART officers were called. The officers came and arrested everyone that was in the fight. A guy named Oscar Grant was in the fight and was also arrested (Meyer). While Grant was being arrested by Officer Mehserle, he resisted the officer’s attempts. Since Grant was resisting he was pushed onto the ground on his stomach to be handcuffed. Johannes Mehserle was having trouble handcuffing Grant so the other BART officers helped him. When Grant was on the ground Mehserle was going to tase him since he would not stop resisting. When Mehserle thought he pulled out his TASER, he instead pulled out his gun. Mehserle accidentally shot Grant with his gun since he thought he pulled out his TASER (Bulwa). Mehserle used his gun instead of his TASER on accident. There could be many reasons as to why he thought he pulled out his TASER instead of his gun. One reason is because there are days when officers change their holsters and the items that are in their holsters. One day the TASER could be on one side and the next day it could be on the other

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