Majority of Arrested Mehserle Protestors Were White

Newly released data from Oakland police show racial breakdown of those arrested
By: Aaron Glantz, New America Media

In the weeks leading up to the verdict in the Johannes Mehserle trial, many commentators worried that  Oakland would explode in a race riot if a majority-white, Los Angeles jury acquitted the former BART police officer of second degree murder in the killing of Oscar Grant.

But a list of those arrested released by the Oakland Police Department to New America Media paints a different picture of the street battles that followed Mehserle’s conviction of involuntary manslaughter.

Of the 78 people arrested in the melee, 27 were black, 34 were white, three were Asian, and one was Hispanic; the race of the balance are reported as either “other” or undetermined.

Of the seven adults charged by the Alameda County District Attorney, two are black and five are white.

OPD spokesperson Holly Joshi said the department never anticipated an explosion of racial violence.

“We don’t base our planning on commentary. We base it on intelligence gathering done by our staff, and we did not have any info regarding ‘race riots,’” she said.

“The race of the arrestees is of no interest,” Joshi said.

Dori Maynard, who directs the Oakland-based Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, said much of the concern about race riots came from a public image of Oakland created during the rise of the Black Panther party in the 1970s.

“Some of the things we’re talking about happened more than 40 years ago,” she said. “It may be time to revisit Oakland’s image.”

That doesn’t mean that Oakland residents don’t care about police shootings, said Rashidah Grinage, who heads the community group, People United for a Better Oakland (PUEBLO), only that they have decided that trashing their city is not the answer.

“The anarchists and the looters tend to be white,” said Grinage, whose husband Raphael and son Luke were shot and killed by Oakland police officers in 1993.

A long time advocate for stronger civilian police oversight, Grinage said she was impressed that “the younger black folks in Oakland worked very hard to do it right. They were very organized and very disciplined,” and as a result very few of them were arrested.

John Hamasaki, a National Lawyers Guild attorney who’s representing Sarah Thibault, 28, and Adrian Wilson, 30, both of whom are white, would say only that his clients felt it was important “to demonstrate against a verdict that they felt was not reflective of the evidence.”

Thibault is charged with commercial burglary and arson, both felonies. Wilson is charged with felony arson and two misdemeanors: failure to disperse and resisting arrest.

“Unfortunately, these prosecutions have become very political,” Hamasaki said.

“There’s been an unfortunate media narrative about out-of-town agitators coming to Oakland for riots,” he said, “but my clients are not out-of-town agitators. They are both from Oakland.”

Only 23 of the 78 people on OPD’s arrest log for the night of the verdict are listed as Oakland residents. Most of the others came from cities across the Bay Area, including San Francisco, Berkeley, Hayward, Daly City and San Leandro.

Only one person arrested, Ryan Donohue of Cincinatti, Ohio, appears to have come from out of state. The home addresses for many of the people booked is recorded as “unknown.”

On the OPD’s arrest log, Thibault is listed as a San Francisco resident, but Hamasaki said that information is based on an old driver’s license.