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Oscar Grant was a parolee high on the addictive synthetic heroin FENTANYL. He engaged in a felony brawl with another parole of a competing drug gang, which lasted over several train stations on a moving train filled with bystanders including small children. Grant could not afford the addictive drug dictating his behaviors that night on his small beginner meatcutters salary of the first job he ever held in his life. Grant was used to easy money selling drugs, not working a job to feed a costly addiction. His state of mind was excluded from the trial by the judge, as was his trouble-maker history: resisting arrest and convicted felon with concealed firearm were the charges that caused his final conviction and parole. Grant had a court-proven record of resisting arrest, and a court-proven record of carrying a concealed weapon. He had the behaviors a criminal gets habituated to when normally carrying a concealed weapon, the arrogance, the furtive hand movements. The jury was not allowed to hear a word about who Grant actually was, what his normal behavior was. Instead grainy videos taken under florescent lights with low resolution phone cams was substituted for well established facts. Grant concealed his hands behind his body near his waistband resisting arrest violently as witnesses testified. No camera shows Grant's concealed hands coming visible until the flash of the gun with the bullet already under way. Mehserle was shaken, coming directly from a concealed handgun call at a nearby station.
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Oscar Grant was a parolee high on the super-addictive synthetic heroin FENTANYL. He engaged in a felony brawl with another parole of a competing drug gang, which lasted over several train stations on a moving train filled with bystanders including small children.
Grant could not afford the addictive drug dictating his behaviors that night on his small beginner meatcutters salary of the first job he ever held in his life.
Grant was used to easy money selling drugs, not working a job to feed a costly addiction.
His state of mind was excluded from the trial by the judge, as was his trouble-maker history: resisting arrest and convicted felon with concealed firearm were the charges that caused his final conviction and parole. Grant had a court-proven record of resisting arrest, and a court-proven record of carrying a concealed weapon. He had the behaviors a criminal gets habituated to when normally carrying a concealed weapon, the arrogance, the furtive hand movements.
The jury was not allowed to hear a word about who Grant actually was, and what his normal behavior was. Instead grainy videos taken under florescent lights with low resolution phone cams was substituted for well established facts. Multiple cameras indeed. Grant concealed his hands behind his body near his waistband resisting arrest violently as witnesses testified. No camera shows Grant's concealed hands coming visible until the flash of the gun with the bullet already under way.
Mehserle was shaken coming from a concealed handgun call at a nearby station directly to this scene of a melee involving up to 20 people -- he had concealed handgun freshly in his mind. His partner loaned him the taser because Mehserle had not yet been issued one -- only about a third of BART police had tasers at that date.
Another camera shows Grant kneeing a male police officer before the final facedown. Grant is shown repeatedly attempting to knee the officer in the groin. The video was online for a long time. I haven't looked lately as it is an old case by now.
Because of the angry mob atmosphere, with an impending riot situation developing behind their backs, and a brawl actually recently just stifled, the police never gave Oscar Grant any pat-down for concealed weapons, and had no way to know that he was not armed as he concealed his hands furtively behind his body.
Had Mehserle not gotten confused under the chaos, the twice-convicted felon-parolee Oscar Grant would have been convicted of his third strike and received a life sentence in prison for the four felonies he is known to have committed that night, including violent felonies of resisting arrest.
Grant is presented as family man, but he loved selling drugs and gang-banging more than he loved his daughter, whose mom he never married. He preferred prison to working as a meat cutter, and we still don't know how he afforded his FENTANY that was found in his blood that night -- he couldn't afford a daughter and an expensive addiction on his family-man starter salary.
Look up Fentanyl, so addictive it often is addicting upon the very first usage.
The history that wasn't allowed to be seen by his jury is online for you to find out. This family man loved his prison family more than his street family and was violent up to the last hour of his life.
