Youth Organizers Respond to New Oscar Grant Video

Youth Organizers Respond to New Oscar Grant Video
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New cell phone video has surfaced in the case of 22-year-old Oakland resident Oscar Grant, who was killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer on New Year's Day.

The footage, captured by a passenger from inside the BART train and obtained by KTVU, shows an officer identified by sources as Tony Pirone punching Grant in the head minutes before Grant was shot. BART officials are carrying out an internal investigation of the incident.

On Monday, a handful of protesters, including high school and college students, gathered at University of California, Berkeley to express outrage over the latest video. Youth Radio's Denise Tejada interviewed organizer Ronald Cruz. What happened to Oscar Grant "sends a message," said Cruz, UC Berkeley law student, about "police harassment and brutality" of black and Latino youth in California. The Oscar Grant case "was caught on camera," he says, "and this time we know that we can expose it and win justice."

Co-organizer Yvette Felarca says the growing movement behind the Oscar Grant case has been successful in "bringing in new information and new evidence. And we have to keep it up, and we're going to keep it up."

Organizers plan to reconvene in Oakland at a Friday hearing for the officer who shot Grant, Johannes Mehserle.

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