Free Republic

An attorney for the family of Banko Brown — the transgender Black man who was shot and killed by a private security guard outside a Walgreens store in downtown San Francisco last month — announced Friday that he was filing a wrongful death lawsuit against Walgreens, the security guard and the guard's employer, Kingdom Group Protective Services. The lawsuit comes days after California's attorney general announced he would review San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins' decision to not charge the guard. The attorney, John Burris, said at a Friday news conference that Brown's death particularly appalled him because he believes...

OAKLAND -- An arbitrator today overturned BART's firing of Marysol Domenici, a police officer who had been accused of lying to investigators and an Alameda County judge about another officer's killing of unarmed train rider Oscar Grant. Although BART never accused Domenici of using excessive force, she became a focus of some of the community outrage stirred by the case because she helped detain Grant before he was shot by former Officer Johannes Mehserle. A jury convicted Mehserle in July of involuntary manslaughter for the Jan. 1, 2009, killing at BART's Fruitvale Station in Oakland. He was sentenced to two...

OAKLAND — A suspicious package delivered to the office of civil rights attorney John Burris has prompted an evacuation of the building, police said. Employees on the eighth through 12th floors of the building at 7677 Oakport St. were ordered out just after 11 a.m., according to Martin Reynolds, Bay Area News Group assistant managing editor, who has been evacuated along with staff members of the Oakland Tribune. Burris is representing the family of Oscar Grant, who was shot to death by a former BART police office on New Year's Day. The Alameda County bomb squad is en route to...

Did an affair between two BART police officers sent to quell a New Year's disturbance at the Fruitvale Station set the stage for the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant by their fellow Officer Johannes Mehserle? That's the claim attorney John Burris makes in the wrongful-death lawsuit against the transit agency that he filed on the Grant family's behalf. The family is seeking $50 million, an unlikely amount even given the gravity of the case. But Burris' play doesn't look to be the courtroom - he's angling for a hefty settlement from BART in advance, largely by putting political pressure on...