Mehserle Arrested

I am extremely pleased to announce that I was wrong in my previous post, in which I predicted that Oakland transit police officer Johannes Mehserle -- who murdered a man in cold blood on January 1st -- would not be properly charged for his crime. It appears that Mehserle fled Oakland after the shooting, and was just apprehended in Nevada.

He resigned from the transit police shortly after the shooting, and while police conducted an investigation of the incident he fled the state. A fugitive warrant was issued for his arrest, and he was charged with homicide. Now of course the "justice" system is still very much slanted in his favor, and he could end up somehow walking free despite the huge amount of evidence against him. This has happened in countless police shooting cases. However, it is a good sign that his crime is being called homicide, rather than an "unjustified use of deadly force" or some other absurd police euphemism for the murders they commit.

Whether it is because Mehserle was a transit police officer, because he fled the state, because of the public outrage over the shootings, or because of the undeniable video evidence, it seems that in this case there is a good chance of justice being served. America still has a long way to go in reigning in its brutal, militarized police forces -- who assault, shoot, and kill innocent people on a regular basis -- but this is a step in the right direction.