Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer and former Friday Night Lights actor Michael B. Jordan are in talks to star in Fruitvale, an independent flick about the 2009 New Year's Eve killing of Oscar Grant by BART officer Johannes Mehserle, which polarized the Bay Area and shed light on police brutality in Oakland. "If deals go through, Jordan will play Grant, the 22-year-old man who crosses paths with friends and enemies, family and strangers on his last day. Spencer would play his tough and protective mother," notes Hollywood Reporter. more ›

BART Police apparently aren't too concerned with backlash following this morning's announcement that District Attorney Gascón won't be pressing criminal charges against the officer who shot and killed 45-year-old Charles Hill last July. As the transit police force announced this afternoon, they have no plans to beef up security during this evenings commute. That is — unless they catch word of a mounting protest. more ›

According to a report from District Attorney Gascón's office, Charles Hill, the homeless man who was shot and killed by BART PD officers in July of last year, was not only "wobbly drunk" during the incident, but was also high on synthetic marijuana and methamphetamine at the time. In the report, forensic toxicologists from the Medical Examiner's office describe Hill as a chronic meth user who had so much of the drug in his system that it was rare for him to be alive in that condition to begin with. With all this new evidence the District Attorney has determined that Officer James Crowell, "acted lawfully in self-defense" when he fired his weapon on Hill. more ›

The family of Charles Hill, the "wobbly drunk" homeless man shot and killed by BART police last July has filed a civil suit against BART seeking monetary damages for the incident. According to the Examiner's report on the filing, Oakland attorney John Burris will be representing Hill's next of kin. Burris, anti-BART PD readers might remember, successfully secured nearly $3 million in damages for Oscar Grant's mother and daughter in the wrongful death case that followed the trial of BART police officer Johannes Mehserle. more ›

In the ongoing Depression Era-esque epidemic of stolen metal, at least one copper thief has been brought down. After nearly running over a suspect with a train last week, BART announced yesterday that they had tracked down their guy, one Dennis McGuire of Noe Valley, to his home on 24th Street. After serving him with a search warrant BART cops turned up lengths of copper cable they believe was stolen from the agency along with a copper thievery kit consisting of a machete, large bolt-cutters, a tree pruner, gloves and a small amount of illegal drugs. more ›

Right after BART officials admitted Tuesday that they have a problem with metal thieves yanking wire off the system's tracks, yet another incident of copper theft was reported. This time, thieves ripped out two 20-foot sections of thick, electrified cables around 4 a.m. Tuesday morning. Yesterday's theft prompted BART to come clean about a copper theft that set the transit agency back a year on a multi-million dollar project that would have reduced delays and sped up train service systemwide. more ›

The BART system has the unfortunate honor of becoming the latest victim in the Bay Area's ongoing war on copper thieves after one such bandit narrowly dodged an oncoming train over the weekend. As BART cops told the Examiner, a train zipping between Balboa Park and Daly City was forced to pull the brakes to avoid hitting the thief who was pulling out wire from the trackway Sunday morning. more ›

Excessive force, according to a federal jury in San Francisco today. Mehserle and four other BART police officers were deemed not guilty of using excessive force in a civil trial over a 2008 confrontation at the Oakland Coliseum/Airport Station. more ›

Johannes Mehserle, the former BART cop convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the Oscar Grant case, is currently back in court standing trial along with four other BART PD officers for alleged police misconduct that predates the killing of Oscar Grant. But Mehserle's father, the man who famously mounted a "Free Johannes Mehserle" grassroots campaign from a large sailboat parked in McCovey Cove, won't be attending the rest of the trial after a U.S. District Court judge banned him from the proceedings yesterday. As it turns out, the elder Mehserle hasn't toned down his antics at all, even after his son was released with only half his jail time served. more ›

The transit agency's police force has finally made a move towards more officer accountability in the wake of the high-profile, fatal shootings of Charles Hill and Oscar Grant by BART Police officers. According to CBS5 and the Chronicle's Phil Matier, BART PD has launched a pilot program to give officers clip-on, ride-along cameras to permanently record future incidents. more ›

After last week's Monday evening BART protest saw an uptick in attending nudists and not much else, demonstrators took an even gentler approach with their rally yesterday evening. Rather than attempting to disrupt service or rally on Market Street as they've done in previous weeks, yesterday's event saw protesters becoming passengers as they quietly rode the trains to distribute fliers describing their cause. (And paying regular fares as well, we presume.) more ›

As you know, the OpBART protests organized by the loose hacker collective Anonymous and well-attended by the media continued last night for the fifth straight week since the group began protesting BART's August 11th cellphone shutdown. As you might expect for a weekly event, the attendance appears to be tapering off. more ›

In keeping with Monday tradition as of late, BART is expecting another protest today beginning at Powell station at 5pm. As usual, expect this to interfere with the evening commute, slowing service and... NOT shutting down stations? Seems like OpBART is undergoing an internal coup. An Anonymous insider writes of the new strategy: more ›

Did BART Police violate everyone's civil liberties by switching off cell phone service last week, or were they simply acting in the name of public safety? An editorial in the Examiner today argues the latter, and this is perhaps predictable given the paper's arguable conservative bent. The ACLU, naturally, has penned a strongly worded letter to BART Police chief Kenton Rainey stating their objections, though they aren't filing any lawsuits just yet. more ›

Breaking news regarding threatened protests on BART throughout August: No Justice, No BART, the website rallying point for last month's BART protest has posted details on another demonstration set for today's evening commute. In a blog post, which has subsequently been removed because the group wants to "mobilize without public announcement beforehand", organizers state they are planning to meet in Civic Center Station, on the platform at 4:30 p.m. Demonstrators hope to remain inconspicuous until just before the evening rush at 5 p.m. and plan to continue the demonstration until around 8 p.m. More details from a cached copy of the blog post below: more ›

Last night BART put out a rider alert warning passengers, "Protests may disrupt service as early as Thursday, August 11th" (that'd be today). The protests - more demonstrations in response to the officer-involved shooting of Charles Hill on July 3rd - don't have a specific date and time, presumably to make a bigger impact on an unprepared system. That said, the agency wants you to be aware that these protests are likely to disrupt train service during commute periods in August. Consider yourselves advised! more ›

At a press conference this afternoon, BART Police released surveillance footage from the Civic Center BART station showing the July 3rd incident in which BART PD officers fired on and killed "wobbly drunk" Charles Hill. The footage, embedded below [Warning: could be graphic to some] is hard to make out and doesn't show one of the officers or the victim, but Bay City News has a detailed report from the press conference with BART PD Chief Kenton Rainey: more ›

The No Justice, No BART group calling for the complete shutdown of the BART Police Department might run in to some resistance from (wait for it...) the BART Police Department during their protest planned for this afternoon. Although peaceful protests and demonstrations are still very much legal in this great country of ours, a BART spokesman told the press they are not so legal on confined BART platforms because they could endanger other riders, BART workers, journalists and the protestors themselves. And the last thing anybody wants is more blood on the BART tracks. more ›

The San Francisco medical examiner's office has identified the victim in Sunday's officer-involved shooting as Charles Hill, a 45-year-old man without a permanent residence. more ›

A suspect armed with a knife and a broken bottle of booze on the Civic Center station BART platform was shot and killed during a confrontation Sunday night. Two BART police officers responded to reports of a "wobbly drunk" white man in tye-die and military fatigues arrived at Civic Center around 9:45 p.m, but the confrontation was over in less than a minute when one of the officers shot the suspect in the torso. The shots were reported at 9:46 p.m and the suspect was rushed to San Francisco General after paramedics attempted CPR on the scene. He was pronounced dead around 10:45 p.m. Even though one of the officers was carrying a Taser, BART Police Chief Kenton Rainey defended his officer's use of deadly force in a press conference yesterday. more ›

Get your "We Are All Oscar Grant" t-shirt cleaned. Tim Redmond over at SFBG has word that BART is holding a public meeting. Why? Because "they want to hear concerns about civilian oversight of the BART police." After the New Year's Day killing of Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale station by a transit officer, BART has come under fire for, well, indiscriminate fire, so this is a decent effort to try smoothing things over via a public forum. Some want BART cops to work sans firearms. Others want to fling red paint in the face of BART general managers. Tom Ammiano wants the transit agency to create a San Francisco-ish oversight agency. But what say you? Let them know Saturday, May 2 at 1 p.m. at the John P. Bort Metro Center Auditorium (101 - 8th Street, Oakland). more ›