RTFA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TMgyRsxKH4

A protest over the fatal shooting of a young man by a BART police afficer went violent, as demonstrators set a bumpster on fire and attacked a police car. Joe Vasquez and Phil Matier report.

This situation is intense, but I would stop short of calling these riots “violent,” in the sense of the term that means causing physical harm, with the possible exception of police shooting rioters with tear gas and projectiles. In the sense in which violent means “extreme” – well – there were some intense moments depicted in the video above.

In case you haven’t been following the situation, my brief synopsis is this: just after midnight on new years day, BART police in Oakland, CA executed a handcuffed man (Oscar Grant), while an onlooker videoed the scene with a cellphone camera.

From Wikipedia for Oscar Grant:

At approximately 2:00 AM PST, BART Police officers responded to a call that two groups of passengers on board were involved in an altercation as the train departed from the West Oakland Station. [3]

Upon arrival at the Fruitvale station, BART Police officers removed Grant and the other men onto the platform. While some of the men were handcuffed, Grant was not. In at least two of the videos he is shown raising his hands, appearing to plead with police while seated against the platform wall. [4]

Moments later, Mehserle and another BART officer positioned Grant him face-down on the ground. An officer can be seen pinning Grant’s upper body to the ground while Mehserle was positioned on his back. A struggle ensued, and seconds later Mehserle began tugging at his gun. He then stood up, unholstered his gun and fired a shot into Grant’s back at point-blank range.

Mehserle then looked up at another officer, appearing surprised. He raised his hand to his face and lowered it, as if in shock at what he had done.

The bullet entered Grant’s back, exited through his front side and ricocheted off the concrete floor of the platform, finally puncturing Grant’s lung. Grant died seven hours later at Highland Hospital from his gunshot wounds.

Grant’s funeral was held at the Palma Ceia Baptist Church in Hayward on January 7, 2009.[5]

Rather than deal with the consequences, “officer” Johannes Mehserle has resigned. According to the San Jose Mercury News:

The BART police officer under investigation for the fatal New Year’s Day shooting of an unarmed man quit his job Wednesday rather than speak with investigators, an official said.

Former officer Johannes Mehserle, 27, has given no comment to BART investigators since the incident in which cell phone videos appeared to capture Mehserle shooting Oscar Grant III as Grant lay facedown on the ground at the Fruitvale station, BART spokesman Linton Johnson said Wednesday.

“We had a meeting scheduled for him to talk, and his attorney and a union rep came in his place and dropped off a letter of resignation instead,” Johnson said. “It’s interesting, because he was supposed to be talking for the administrative part of our investigation, which is privileged information and couldn’t have been used in any criminal investigation anyway.”

He should probably run for his life at this point, because Mehserle has demonstrated a sequence of cowardly, unlawful actions, and it seems like the popular opinion is currently against him.

A brief, narrated clip of the execution video follows. If you don’t want to see this, don’t click it, but like all cellphone videos, it is grainy and difficult to see the crime happening.

If anyone has an image of Mehserle, please send RTFA the tip. We now know the identity of the man who was executed, but we do not yet know the visual identity of the public servant who served as executioner.

UPDATE

Mehserle is depicted above. Thanks, placidwater.

RTFA: http://www.kutv.com/content/news/local/story.aspx?…

A new bill proposed at the legislature would allow for police to withhold misconduct reports from the public. Supporters of the bill believe that police misconduct should be kept secret from the public so to not discredit police testimony. Others say that a forthright police unit is essential to the community.

In September, Jared Massey was zapped with a taser by Trooper John Gardner. A video of the incident was recorded from Gardner’s patrol car. Gardner can be seen shocking Massey until he hits the ground while Massey’s wife screams from the side of their SUV.

More than a million people watched the video on “YouTube.” Massey was shocked to see his new found fame. The footage may have never been seen had Massey not made a records request to obtain the tape.

Currently, misconduct reports are available in Utah with an official records request. Under the bill SB260, sponsored by Senator Chris Buttars, the video and investigation report from Massey’s tazering might have been kept secret from the public and journalists.

RTFA: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=4022717&page…

Robin Garrison, an off-duty 42-year-old firefighter, was walking in Berliner Park in Columbus, Ohio, in May when he saw a woman sunbathing topless under a tree.

He approached her and they started talking and getting comfortable, the woman smiling and resting her foot on his shoulder at one point.

Eventually, she asked to see Garrison’s penis; he unzipped his pants and complied.

Seconds later, undercover police officers pulled up in a van and arrested Garrison; he was later charged with public indecency, a misdemeanor, based on video footage taken by cops who were targeting men having sex or masturbating in the park. While topless sunbathing is legal in the city’s parks, exposing more than that is against the law.

The sunbathing woman is not affiliated with the police department and she was not asked to take part in the sting operation, according to a spokesperson for the department.

WTF?! So this woman was not a part of the ’sting’ operation yet the police had video footage pointed directly at her and were there within seconds? Sounds like the cops are being indecent.

RTFA: http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti…

“Welcome to Snyderville,” a documentary about the political squabbles in Roseland, was among the films at this year’s Notre Dame Student Film Festival.
Click on the video link to the right of this story to watch a clip from the film.
The film was shot last spring by Notre Dame students Jacob Imm, Mike Molenda and Noble Robinette.

Click here for the direct link to the video.

From: Scott Hums
Subject: RE: YouTube Roseland Police video
Date: September 28, 2007 11:51:39 AM PDT
To: farkinga

I am the Web Director at WNDU. You may most definately use me as a source and if you ever have any more questions, please feel free to email me any time.

Like I said earlier, I have no problem with people uploading parts of the video. Completely ignoring the legal argument, it’s the best for both parties. The information is spread and the topic is discussed without “giving away” the power of the full version of the video. Using 20 or 30 seconds is perfectly fine and I wished everyone did that.

The problem comes from people thinking they have a right to just show the whole or nearly whole video. That’s what we are fighting. There’s no reason anyone has to upload the whole thing when we are offering it for free to anyone who follows a link. All they are doing is encouraging us to never put this material on the internet in the first place, which is something that is obviously not good for everyone involved.

“Fair use” is about having access to material to make further commentary without damaging the marketability of the copyright holder. That’s a concept that most YouTube users fail to understand from my recent experience with this video.

Also, to say WNDU is instigating a media blackout couldn’t be farther from the truth. WNDU put the video on the internet before it even made broadcast, we submitted the link to various sites, the biggest one being what appears to be your namesake, fark.com. EDITORS NOTE: I am unaffiliated with fark.com – this is merely a coincidence that dates back to the 1990s. We also sent the video to CNN and MSNBC where it aired numerous times the week after it happened. It was also made available to every NBC affiliate in the country as part of NBC News Channel video sharing system. Shipping the clip to some of the biggest blogs, cable TV networks, and about 200 TV stations doesn’t fit the description of a media blackout.

Obviously it is WNDU’s gain the bigger the story gets, but the only edge we have is the copyrights for the entire 5 minute video. Having someone upload the whole clip is not fair use.

Like I said, we are very grateful for what you did and I wish everyone else had the same understanding of copyright law that you did. In fact, you really didn’t have to put all that fair use and copyright info in your description and video. I didn’t report the other video like yours (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrfRQbdxQFs) because it too falls under fair use guidelines and we are glad it is online. All we ask is you link to the original story and properly credit WNDU, which you did. You can get rid of the copyright information if you so choose, or better yet, explain why your video is fine but the other 95% of the videos out there are not.

It also goes to show just how clueless some people are. Honestly, if they would have sent me an email asking me why it was deleted or why it wasn’t fair use, we could have very easily come to an understanding. Instead people just assumed we want to hide the video, which doesn’t make any sense since we are the ones who originally put it on the internet, marketed it, and left it on the internet. I’ve only been contacted by one organization asking for permission to use the clip or asking about what we would allow. I have no problems clarifying anything. In fact, if they ask, I’m more than likely going to give them a little more slack in using the video just because they asked. I am not an unreasonable person.

There is an obvious middle ground out there on this topic and I’m glad you managed to find it.

First, I must apologize for the delay in posting the full text of the explanation. I realize now that other people wanted to comment on the attack, but without this full text, they weren’t sure where their fair use claim would be valid.

As I read the WNDU-TV letter, it appears they sanctioned my “fair use” video of the attack because it used such a small portion of the raw video. However, “fair use” is notoriously inconsistently applied, and it may not be the case that the next fair use claim would stand so firmly on the “quantity argument.”

As I understand it, there is now another video of the attack that is MUCH more informative, as it provides a great deal of context for the situation. The amount of commentary is really fantastic. [EDIT: 2007-10-20]I am assuming that the author of the video has used the DMCA counter-claim provisions to get the video back online, and so has been in direct contact with WNDU-TV. To be clear, this is just inference, and hasn’t been confirmed yet. The author states they have been in touch with YouTube, not with WNDU.[/EDIT]

The author, BadCase, describes the video as:

“This is a updated version of the one that was removed. All aspects of fair use laws are met in this version. It is only a small amount of footage in relation to the entire work,it is transformative, educational, not for profit, and does not hurt the market of the copyright holder instead it will benefit the copyright holder by increasing traffic to their site.”

I tend to agree.

[EDIT: 2007-10-20]
I must clarify that this email is a correspondence, and not an official statement of WNDU-TV.
[/EDIT]