Mehserle’s Sentence Brings Julian Alexander to Memory

By
Gabriel San Roman
– November 8, 2010Posted in: "The OC", anaheim, Fresh Juice

Last Friday’s sentencing of former BART officer Johannes Mehserle to only two years in the shooting death of Oscar Grant in Oakland rings out as yet another injustice. Claiming he had reached for his taser instead of his gun, Mehserle shot Grant, an African-American in the back on January 1st, 2009 as numerous people taking the BART filmed the killing with cellphones. Without a gun enhancement charge, and with time served, Mehserle will probably spend only the next seven months of his life behind bars.

A few months before Grant was shot and killed, another fatal shooting of an African-American, Julian Alexander, occurred in Anaheim. For those of you who may have forgotten, Alexander, a newlywed with a child on the way, ran outside his home in the early morning hours of October 28th, 2008, with a stick to protect his pregnant wife against burglars on the run. An Anaheim police officer, in pursuit of those same suspects, crossed paths with Alexander and fired two shots at him instead, killing him. As news reports of the relatives reactions relayed, it was a matter of shoot first, ask questions later:

“He was a good kid, trying to protect his house,” said Alexander’s mother-in-law Michelle Mooney. “And the police, instead of asking questions, they just shot first. Somebody has to be held responsible for this.”
Mooney’s desire for justice went unheard. No one was ever held responsible for anything. Officer Kevin Flanagan’s two gun shot’s to Alexander’s chest and subsequent handcuffing of him were declared “justified” by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rauckaucas. (Flanagan had since gone on in 2009 to become a detective heading a county-wide effort to break an auto-theft ring)
The defense of the police action read as followed:
“A reasonable police officer in that circumstance likely would shoot there person who’s coming at him with that stick as though he’s going to slug him with it. He’s about to be assaulted and possibly injured and he’s entitled to defend himself from that. But I think that the public would understand that.”
The last anything had been written about the shooting death of Alexander was the news a year ago that a candlelight vigil was held in his memory. Before that his family felt that they did not receive the information necessary to fully understand what really happened that fatal night. In addition, they also wanted a statue memorializing him placed at Disneyland. Some form of public memorial is in order – perhaps not at Disneyland, but elsewhere in the city. If no justice is to be even approached, then this 20 year-old whose life was cut down too short should most certainly be woven into the fabric city’s civic memory. Amnesia would be injustice anew.

About Gabriel San Roman