Posted on 06/29/2010 7:59:31 AM PDT by SmithL
On any given day in the Bay Area, it's common to come across aspiring musicians hawking homemade music CDs on the streets of Oakland, Berkeley or San Francisco.
Kazi Reeves, 25, who spends time each week outside Peet's Coffee Shop on Oakland's Lakeshore Avenue, is an easygoing pitchman who uses an iPod and headphones to offer potential customers a free sample.
He is unabashedly friendly and upbeat, except when it comes to the Johannes Mehserle trial in Los Angeles.
"I expect an unfair verdict," Reeves said. "A fair verdict would at least be manslaughter," he said. Anything less "would be enough for me to take to the streets and protest," he said.
Mehserle, a former BART police officer, is charged with murdering train passenger Oscar Grant, who was shot in the back as he lay on a platform at an Oakland train station. The New Year's Day 2009 shooting was captured on video and has been viewed by millions of people.
Mehserle, who is white, killed Grant, who was black, moments after he was removed from the train along with several others, allegedly for fighting. The death of Grant, 22, sparked two nights of demonstrations and vandalism in downtown Oakland.
Mehserle's attorney, Michael Rains, succeeded in his bid to move the trial from Alameda County because of extensive media coverage. The trial, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is expected to wrap up in the coming days and be handed over to the jury.
The jury, which has no blacks, for the trial has sparked the usual suspicions and fears among young and old in the African American community that a lesser verdict will be reached.
For young black men like Reeves, who was 7 years old in 1992 when the verdict in the Rodney King beating verdict sparked three days...riots
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
For me bracing for the worse should mean setting up claymores and mini guns around oakland’s public buildings.
No matter what he is convicted of they will still riot..
Yes, let’s take a lesson from the Palistinians: Destroy our own neighborhoods to protest how we’re being treated by DA MAN.
You know, if the BART system was a bullet train, none of this would have happened.
What? Our black brothers rioting, stealing TV sets and stereos, breaking windows and setting cars on fire? Seems IMPOSSIBLE, doesn’t it? After King was shot, Pittsburgh Police set up 50 cal machine guns at the south end of the Liberty Tubes, connecting the south hills with downtown. My father owned a business quite near the area and the cops told him quite calmly that any black mobs exiting the Tubes to the South Hills would be SHOT. PERIOD. That information was given to blacks on the city side of the Tubes as well. No rioters went through the Tunnels. But of course, political correctness did not rule the day 40+ years ago, did it!
Yep time to pick up that new flat screen tv at a giveaway price..
Have not ventured into Oakland in 10 yrs,you can actually feel the hate for whitey from its citizens...
Obama voters will trash a city when their sports team wins a championship. And that’s when they’re HAPPY!
Johannes Mehserle deserves to go to prison. Period.
No matter what he is convicted of they will still riot..”
You are correct.
Those fools riot when their favorite team wins something...ala the Lakers & Los Angeles.
I often wonder if ANY insurance company will insure ANY buildings within a mile circle of the Staples Center?
Face it, America is bored. Riots in Oakland would be just the ticket for TV viewership.
How does an honest prosecutor get an all-white jury in LA unless he wants a not guilty or much lesser verdict than murder?
If there is a not guilty verdict, I would not be very critical of a riot if limited to just burning down the police station and not private businesses.
Agreed. No excuse for what he did.
The guy committed murder or manslaughter. I watched the video. There is no excuse for this.
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