Oscar Grant Case

Since the police officer Johannes Mesherle only got the minimal jail time of two years, I do not think that justice was served at all. Honestly, I think this might be a case where the people had to include the issues of race in to it. The police officer was of course a Caucasian male and the victim, Oscar Grant was an African-American.

In this society it is still all about your race. Although there are arguments’ stating that people think that race-hating is over, I think it is not true. If we were to take a closer look at it, discrimination is still all around us even if it under the radar. This tragedy might count as an example to this hate.

The whole crime that happened on New Year’s Eve should have cost the BART police officer way more time sentenced to jail. The event that happened was still considered man-slaughter, and shouldn’t that mean that Johannes Mesherle should have gotten more jail time? I think that the only reason his case was not sentenced to longer prison time was because of the obvious reason: he is white and he is a police officer. All of this seems unfair to me. If the tables were turned and the man who was shot was white and if the man who shot him was African-American, then there is a probable chance that the man would have gotten a harsher punishment.

My take on this whole situation is that the legal system didn’t do enough to justify the man-slaughter of Oscar Grant. The response that was received by the police officer was not enough. Honestly, the excuse that he confused his gun for his tazer is completely ridiculous. The police officers are trained to know the difference between their weapons. Oscar Grant was on the floor handcuffed and defenseless. He was not doing anything to attack the police officer, yet he was killed for no justifiable reason.

A just verdict for me is to give Johannes Mesherle a longer jail sentence. If that happened instead of the minimal two year sentence that he was given, I think the riot would have not even gone down. The legal system really did not do a good job of serving justice in this case.