It's just one of more than 500 extra-judicial executions so far this year by US Police. It's not national news, and probably never will be. It doesn't, after all, ring out like someone shot in the back on video while running away.
Still, it happened in Oakland, CA, and a member of the Oakland Police Department pulled the trigger. That is worthy of note, as OPD is still, after eleven years, under a Federal Monitor and a Federal Judge for both egregious acts of criminality and racism and just as blatant and violent civil rights violations.
In the early morning hours of June 7th, 2015, for reasons still unknown, a car with a lone driver and no passengers pulled to the side of the I 580 westbound Lake Merritt exit ramp. And the driver fell asleep - or became otherwise unconscious. The Fire Department was tasked to investigate; upon doing so, and noticing that a gun was visible on the passenger seat, they called in the Oakland Police.
You can write the rest of the story yourself. You know how it ends.
Oh, you want to know the details?
The police first tried to wake the man using a loudspeaker or bullhorn, to no avail. Their next tactic was to fire bean-bag rounds at the windows of the BMW. That did not roust the man either. Then one or more officers approached the passenger side and smashed in that window with a metal rod. This may or may not have begun to wake the man up, the details are unclear.
What is clear is that some minutes later the same or another group of officers approached the vehicle and the man had become, or was becoming conscious. One officer shot him with a taser and at approximately the same time another shot him with her service revolver. The lawyer for the officer who fired the live ammunition has claimed that his client saw him making a motion with his arm towards the gun on the passenger seat, so she fired, fearing for her life.
He was then taken to the county hospital and pronounced dead.
His name was Demouria Hogg. He had three children.
The Anti Police Terror Project, a group formed in Oakland after Michael Brown was executed, released the following statement yesterday.
... There are no plausible circumstances under which a man sleeping in a car should be rousted and then killed. We know it, OPD knows it, and the City of Oakland knows it. In fact, last month in West Oakland, another man was found sleeping in a car with a gun and was apprehended safely. The failure of OPD's imagination in how to deal with the situation at Lake Merritt without loss of life is in and of itself a crime, and those responsible should be fired for gross negligence and prosecuted for wrongful death.
If the Mayor of Oakland, the Oakland Police and the City of Oakland wish to have us believe there is any shred of accountability within, they must
1. Immediately release the name or names of the officer or officers involved in the shooting, as required by the 5/29/14 California Supreme Court decision, Long Beach Police Officers Association v City of Long Beach.
2. Immediately make public all body camera video, dashcam video and any surveillance video of the entire event.
3. Release the coroners report and the police report to the family.
4. Immediately request that the Attorney General appoint a special investigations team for this officer involved shooting. No one in any police department, let along the Oakland police department, can be trusted to investigate their own, nor is the District Attorney capable of an impartial or robust investigation of an OPD officer, as evidenced by their sham report clearing Miguel Masso of the death of Alan Blueford three years ago.
A vigil for Demouria Hogg will be held tonight, Friday, June 12th, in the vicinity of the gas station / off ramp at Lake Merritt, beginning at 6:00 PM.
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Edited audio of OPD on scene, before and after the shooting.