The firm hired to investigate BART police's handling of the January 1st, 2009 Oscar Grant shooting released a report August 11th revealing the many mistakes the police made. In the nine page report, the firm—Meyers Nave—states that BART police are trained in “tactical concepts” such as staying together and working as a team. This means that officers should control situations by having one officer search the supposed suspects, while the other officers collectively calm the crowd down. Instead, at the Fruitvale station on January 1, 2009, the officers were dispersed and far away from one another, thus unable to keep everyone under control. No thorough search was performed.

The report breaks down the police conduct the night of the shooting and already media outlets are calling the report, 'scathing'. To me, it looks like every part of the police training was pretty much ignored that night. With former BART police officer Johannes Mesherle now standing trial for the death of Oscar Grant, one has to wonder what this report may mean for his case. Not jumping the gun or anything -- but with so much having gone wrong that is now documented in this report, the outcome for Mesherle doesn’t look too positive.