CALIFORNIA BEAT EDITORIAL

The BART Police Department gave public safety another slap in the face this week.

Two of the police officers who were present on the platform on the morning of New Year’s Day when unarmed train passenger Oscar Grant was shot and killed by a former colleague will be teaching other officers on how to deal with uncooperative suspects and crowd control, KGO-TV reported Tuesday.

It’s a highly controversial decision, mainly because those two officers — Marysol Domenici and Jon Woffinden — have been widely criticized for those same two scenarios in the run-up to the moments that ultimately led to the killing of Grant.

In court testimony during former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle’s preliminary hearing both Domenici and Woffiden gave their account of the moments that precipitated the shooting incident.

Both exaggerated how chaotic the situation was. They made false statements that were rebuked by videotaped evidence that prosecutors dutifully pointed out.

In testimony given to the court, Woffinden “thought of his wife and kids” as he responded to the incident telling Judge C. Don Clay that the situation was so chaotic, he felt outnumbered and feared for his life.

Then they played the tape of Grant and his friends sitting against the wall of the platform in relative calm.

And from Domenici, she told the court during the testimony things were so bad that night that she thought “I’m going to have to kill someone” and was concerned that she only had two bullets.

Domenici was also one of the officers on the platform that night who sought to confiscate cameras from BART passengers who captured the incident on tape.

We ask: does the riding public want these two individuals to be teaching the next generation of BART Police recruits?

And what message does that send to the Bay Area, after vows from the BART Board and Police Chief Gary Gee, to ensure that nothing like what occurred on Jan. 1 would happen again?

The California Beat is concerned that BART Police has made yet another embarrassing move in asking these two individuals to propagate the questionable culture of the Department.

First the redesign of the BART Police patch, now this. What’s next?

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