In case you haven't heard, a transit cop in Oakland, Johannes Mehserle, fatally shot a man, Oscar Grant, execution style while he was being restrained.



This view has a better perspective.



Did the cop mean to shoot this guy in the back? I don't think so. Although the second video shows the actual shooting clearer, the first video shows his immediate reaction. He looks completely surprised that he shot the guy. You hear all those people screaming in the videos? I am sure that the cops heard them too. No cop is crazy enough to execute a guy in front of whole bunch of witnesses.

My guess is that he thought he was shooting him with a taser for "resisting arrest." According to lots of other articles I have read on the internet, Johannes was threatening Oscar with his taser gun a little before the shooting but apparently put it away. It is possible that he mistakenly drew his gun thinking it was a taser gun (which begs the question: why are taser guns so similar to REAL guns?).

But there is something that SHOULD come out of this. Had there not been a TON of video cameras showing this, do we really think there would have been this kind of uproar? Is it be possible that the city would quietly pay off the family and the guy would be reassigned? Who knows. I think one thing is clear though. People should be ENCOURAGED to video tape cops during arrests. Because of their "authority," cops' accounts of situations will always be trusted and civilians will be suspect. The video is your tool to show the world the truth.

It should be a criminal offense for a cop to try to stop an innocent bystander from video taping an arrest from a safe distance(jackass videographers that get in the face of cops while they are doing their job deserve to lose their cameras and get arrested themselves).