BART probe becoming pricey
By: Mike Aldax
Examiner Staff Writer
March 25, 2009
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| Difficult case: The cost of a probe into a fatal Jan. 1 shooting by a BART police officer has ballooned to more than twice the original estimate. (Courtesy Photo) |
SAN FRANCISCO — The cost of an investigation into the fatal shooting of a passenger by a BART police officer has more than doubled in recent weeks.
Early Jan. 1, a BART train was stopped at the Fruitvale station in Oakland after reports of a fight onboard. BART police, including then-officer Johannes Mehserle, responded to the chaotic scene. At one point during the melee on the station platform, Mehserle fatally shot Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old Hayward man, who was laying face down.
In the wake of the shooting, BART hired the Oakland-based law firm Meyers Nave on Feb. 11 to conduct an independent probe.
BART began seeking outside investigative help following public allegations that it had mishandled its own investigation into the incident.
The transit agency initially agreed to pay Meyers Nave $99,000 to conduct the three-month investigation, but the firm’s attorneys are now requesting an additional $151,000, because the “volume of information and breadth of the necessary investigation is greater than anticipated,” according to a BART document recommending its board of directors approve the added funding. The board will consider the request to the more than 150 percent price increase — which brings the total to $250,000 — at its meeting Thursday.
BART spokesman Linton Johnson said the initial estimate only accounted for the cost of interviewing the 40 witnesses who had already spoken to authorities during Mehserle’s criminal investigation.
“[The firm is] discovering there are a lot more witnesses that they have to interview,” he said.
Meyers Nave’s investigation will involve as many as 100 interviews, the firm’s head attorney, Jayne Williams, told The Examiner on Tuesday.
“We are in the process of scheduling [more interviews],” Williams said, adding that the firm officially began its investigation March 1 and is about “a third of the way through.”
The firm will not only explore Mehserle’s involvement, but also the actions of the other six police officers who were on the platform at the time of the shooting, along with those of their supervisors.
One part of its probe, for example, will look into allegations set forth by John Burris, the attorney for Grant’s family, claiming the events that led up to the shooting resulted from an “unprofessional relationship” between two BART police officers.
The additional funds needed to support Meyers Nave’s full investigation would come out of BART’s operating budget for this fiscal year, which ends in June, the transit agency said. BART, which is facing one of its worst financial crises in years, is projecting a $300 million operating-budget shortfall during the next five years.
The probe is one of several investigations BART has commissioned in response to the fatal shooting. The agency is in the process of hiring a separate company to conduct a top-to-bottom review of its police procedures. It has also asked the U.S. attorney general to investigate allegations that the shooting was racially motivated, or whether BART police officers might be harboring a history of civil-rights violations.
