POLICE BRUTALITY CAUGHT ON TAPE AGAIN
The transit agency announced Sunday that it is investigating the incident. The video shows the officer forcefully removing a man from a train. Other passengers had called for help, BART said, saying the man yelled racial slurs and obscenities and challenged others to fight.
In the video, an officer on duty at the West Oakland Station, whom BART officials declined to identify, enters the train and grabs Michael Joseph Gibson, 37, with two hands. The officer takes about seven steps while pushing Gibson off the train and across the platform toward a wall, which has a concrete base and glass panels above. There is a collision, and glass shatters onto the platform and the men.
The officer then handcuffs Gibson. An unidentified man approaches the pair and returns to the train to ask riders, “Anybody got a rag or something? The officer is bleeding.”
The officer and Gibson were both treated at Oakland hospitals for lacerations and later released. Gibson was moved to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. No one else was hurt.
“At this time, we don’t know what broke the glass. The investigation, we are hopeful, will reveal that,” said BART police patrol Cmdr. Daniel Hartwig.
Agency officials remain under intense pressure in the wake of an officer’s fatal shooting of an unarmed man on New Year’s Day at the Fruitvale Station. The officer, Johannes Mehserle, who later resigned, is charged with murder.
