Every year there seems to be a new tragedy that forces us all to think about our loved ones and our own safety. In 2009, the incident that did so was one that many will never forget. On New Year's Day, 22-year-old Oscar Grant was heading home after celebrating into the morning, but he would never make it. Using BART, the Bay Area public transit system, Grant was with many of his friends and strangers ringing in the new year. However after BART Police responded to a call of a fight on one of the trains, the situation turned from jubilation to chaos. In the hectic struggle to control the inebriated crowd, one officer made a life-changing mistake. Johannes Mehserle, 32, was attempting to handcuff 22-year-old Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale BART Station in Oakland, California. Mehserle attempted to pull out his taser to help put Grant in cuffs, but in the heat of the moment he pulled his pistol and a single shot rang out.
After growing up in the Bay Area, and using the BART system my whole life, this story shook the East Bay. Many media outlets took the story and ran with it. 'White BART Policeman Slays Black Teen' was stamped across almost every newspaper in the area. The black community was outraged, and it only pitted them against the police--the very people sent to protect us.
Jaxson Van Derbeken, from the San Francisco Chronicle, helped cover the trial of Mehserle and the death of Grant. In his 2014 article titled, "Johannes Mehserle says he feared Oscar Grant was going for gun" he does a good job of not taking sides. When this article was published, Mehserle was being tried for the killing of Grant and many of his comments on the stand were included in the piece. At one point Mehserle claims to have said that he was going for his taser, but the audio from cell phone videos don't corroborate that story. Derbeken does an excellent job of stating that fact without adding his own opinion as well. He leaves space for the reader to draw conclusions about the situation instead.
When addressing subjects that can divide communities, I believe it's important for the journalist to remain objective, and Derbeken did just that. I really couldn't tell you how he feels about Grant or the actions of Mehserle, which to me means he did his job well. Instead he supplies the reader information and facts, not opinion. This story was one that I felt remained more objective than many others written at the time. The incident did leave an impact on the community with more attention paid to police brutality, and for me was the beginning of a larger Black Lives Matter movement. This issue is still very timely, with racial crimes still occurring today. I only hope that our journalists can remain objective, like Derbeken did, and not add fuel to the fire.
The article can be found here:
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