BART Board picks outside group to review police

BART Officer, Johannes Mehserle, shot and killed Oscar Grant

originally published:
24th April 2009

BART’s Board of Directors has voted unanimously to select the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives to conduct a comprehensive review of the transit agency’s Police Department following the shooting death of an unarmed passenger.

Director Carole Ward Allen, who chairs BART’s newly created Police Department Review Committee, said the organization, which is based in Alexandria, Va., and was founded in 1976, “will look into all aspects of our police department.”

Ward Allen said the review, which is expected to take four months and cost $128,000, “is the latest in a series of significant steps we’re taking to ensure a similar incident does not occur again,” referring to the shooting death of Oscar Grant III at the Fruitvale station in Oakland at the hands of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle.

Mehserle, 27, who resigned a week after the incident, has been charged with murder for Grant’s death and is scheduled to face a preliminary hearing May 18.

BART previously hired the Oakland law firm Meyers Nave at a cost of $250,000 to conduct a disciplinary investigation into the transit officers’ actions on the day Grant was killed.

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Posted by Tippa Naphtali on 01/05/2009. Filed under Police Brutality & Killings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to BART Board picks outside group to review police

Ben Smithsen

03/05/2009 at 10:59 am

This, hopefully, is very good news.

I hope that the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives takes a broad and brave view of this and restores hope for a reformed police force.

Ben