BART asks for help

this officer should get the friggin death sentence...just my opinion....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/matierandross/detail?&entry_id=35185

Stay tuned -- BART plans to announce today it will hand off its internal affairs probe of the fatal police shooting of Oscar Grant to an outside law firm or public agency in an attempt to bring credibility to the investigation.

"The decision has been made to hand off the investigation to ensure its independence, and to ensure the outcome is more credible to the public," BART director Joel Keller confirmed this morning.

BART police were investigating reports of a fight early New Year's Day when officers pulled Grant and several other young men from a train at the Fruitvale station in Oakland. Grant, 22, was unarmed and lying on his stomach when Officer Johannes Meheserle, 27, pulled his gun and shot him to death.

Mehserle quit the force Jan. 7 rather than speak to internal affairs investigators, and six days later, prosecutors charged him with murder. His attorney is expected to ask an Alameda County Superior Court judge Friday to allow Mehserle to be released on bail from Santa Rita Jail.

The case has sparked a public furor and left BART brass on the defensive.

Keller said he was confident BART could conduct a "fair and thorough" investigation on its own, but acknowledged that both the agency and its police force needed to rebuild its public trust.

"One way to do that is to hand off the investigation to a third party, and let the facts take us wherever they go," Keller said.

Just which firm or agency will do the job has not been determined.

BART, by the way, also intends to hire a nationally recognized firm to do a top-to-bottom review of its police practices "to make sure they are consistent with the best practices across the country," Keller said.