What Happened After The Shooting And Fruitvale’s Connections To ‘Black Lives Matter’
As noted briefly at the end of the film, Officer Johannes Mehserle, the man who shot Oscar Grant, was initially charged with first-degree murder before he testified in court that he meant to pull out his taser instead of his gun. That led to the charge being downgraded to “involuntary manslaughter,” which led to two years of sentencing in prison. Mehserle only spent 11 months in jail. Oscar Grant’s shooting was one of the early modern incidents that gained public outcry toward police. After protests, the general manager and chief of BART police stepped down and the other officers involved were fired.
