Oakland Police Shoot Oscar Grant’s Cousin

by Jorge Rivas, for Colorlines

Over the weekend Oakland Police seriously injured 24-year-old Tony Jones after they shot him in the back. Jones’ mother says he is a cousin of Oscar Grant — the Hayward man killed by a BART police officer on Jan. 1, 2009.

“I talked to my son. My son said ‘Momma, the officers [are] lying. They watched me get out of the car. They watched me walk. They started speeding up and I took off running across the street and when I took off running and I heard the gun go pow, pow, pow,’” Jones’ mother Betrina Works-Grant told KGO. “He said he was running with his hands like this [at his sides]. The police shot at him and shot him in his back. They never said they [were] the police,” More details from KGO:

Sunday evening shortly before midnight, Oakland police stopped a car on the 2000 block of 62nd Avenue. Police say they suspected the vehicle might be linked to a robbery that had just occurred in the area. While police have not identified Jones by name, they say a passenger with a gun ran from the vehicle and was shot by an officer. Jones’s mother and attorney deny he had a gun.

“Tony said he did not have no gun. He got out the vehicle. Some lady, he paid the lady $10, to give him a ride to wherever he got shot at,” said Works-Grant.

For several hours, attorney Waukeen McCoy says he was denied the right to meet with his client at the hospital, going so far as to take a picture of the Oakland officer he says refused entry after Jones requested to see his attorney.

“We believe what happened is that the Oakland Police Department is hiding the fact that they shot him in his back while he was retreating from them,” said McCoy.

The news comes on the heels of the San Francisco District Attorney announcing BART police officer “acted lawfully” when he shot and killed a knife-wielding homeless man on a train platform.

“Officer Crowell only fired at Hill after recognizing an imminent threat of serious bodily injury and commanding Hill to drop the knife,” the report said, according to the Bay Citizen. “Officer Crowell fired at Hill in self-defense.”

In August 2011, Colorlines.com published a two-year long investigation that identified 16 Oakland Police officers still on duty who were responsible for more than half of the department’s officer-involved shooting incidents in the past decade. These repeat shooters operate behind a wall of secrecy, built over decades and sealed with a 2006 California Supreme Court decision blocking public access to personnel records.