What it's sounding like is that the guy was big into street crime, and I'm speculating that his family figured that he'd meet some bad end someday.  His memorial service apparently didn't say squat about how he died.

While that doesn't excuse the heinous behavior of the cops here, I frankly can understand the media's reluctance to run with this as a big story: the Rodney King beating touched off serious race riots, and nobody except for a neocon looking for a scapegoat really wants that.

It's hard to get the police to go after their own; since he resigned, a lot of cops are going to want to leave it at that.  It's not right, but it is how things tend to work.

A police officer shoots a prostrate, unarmed man in the back at point blank range and the biggest punishment he's going to receive is voluntarily resigning?

I understand that that Oscar Grant may not have been a model citizen.  That doesn't matter one wit.  It really doesn't.  The odds that the police officer knew his name, let alone any record that he might have are pretty damn low.  This could have been any citizen that found themselves in an altercation on a train platform.  And honestly, in my opinion, this could happen to any black man on a train platform in this country.

Ignoring it does not help address the problem.  If the rest of the country can pretend the problem doesn't exist it will never be solved.

He was a punk criminal who is now dead. Except for the fact it will cost taxpayers a bunch of money no one cares how he died.

Your all upset that he was shot by the police. Well isn't violence something Grant was intimately familiar with? He was asaulting people riding on BART before he was killed. If you lived the kind of life he live I wouldn't cry at your funeral if you were shot by a cop either.

So now the world is a little bit safer. Next time you visit the bay area there is one less monster roaming the streets and riding the public tranportation for you to worry about.

Once again, what the hell does his background have to do with this obvious and gross excess use of force?

Nothing prevents a similar thing from happening to me, a law abiding black man and veteran, if I got into an altercation on a crowded train with you because you assumed I was some kind of monster because of the way I looked.

Not "famous" enough? It's all over the news.

Care to guess what my theory is?

i heard briefly about this story but didn't know the particulars.  this story and video is fucking heinous and this officer should be investigated and tried for the murder of oscar grant.