Politics
From a ninth-floor courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Oscar Grant III, was sentenced this afternoon to two years in prison. The sentence, from Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry, will include credit for the time Mehserle has already spent in jail.
As Oakland awaits news from the Los Angeles sentencing of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, downtown businesses are preparing today for the possibility of violence. Storefronts around Frank Ogawa Plaza are boarded up including the Oakland police Internal Affairs office, the offices of Youth Radio and the Men’s Wearhouse and Foot Locker stores nearby.
At 4 p.m. Friday afternoon, the vote for Oakland’s mayor will head to a runoff vote count, determining whether front-runner Don Perata will maintain his lead, or if trailing contenders Jean Quan, Rebecca Kaplan or Joe Tuman will be able to catch up.
Amid a wave of Democratic victories in California that defied major gains for Republicans in the rest of the nation, the race to become the state’s next attorney general is so evenly split—between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Steve Cooley—that its winner may not be known for weeks.
Probation or prison? On Friday morning, the sentence of Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Oscar Grant III, will rest in the hands of one man, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry.
In the same downtown court building that housed the O.J. Simpson trial, Perry is expected to juggle a wide range of sentencing options ranging from parole to 14 years in California state prison.
“The move to end marijuana prohibition is far stronger this morning than it ever has been,” said Stephen Gutwillig, the California director of the Drug Policy Alliance, as members of the Yes on 19 campaign gathered at their headquarters in downtown Oakland early Wednesday following the initiative’s defeat, garnering only 46.1 percent of the vote.
Jerry Brown made his first public appearance as governor-elect Wednesday morning, telling a roomful of reporters at a press conference in Oakland that he has no plans to move permanently to Sacramento. Brown went on to address issues ranging from government transparency to state worker pensions.
On Tuesday, Oakland residents decided the fate of several local education and public safety funding measures, along with statewide ballot initiatives like Proposition 19.
Though mayoral candidate Don Perata leads at the ballot box—11 points above his nearest competitor, with all Oakland precincts reporting—the city’s new ranked-choice voting system means it could be more than a week before a new mayor is formally selected. Under the rules of ranked-choice voting, a system approved by nearly more than two-thirds of Oakland voters in 2006, voters rank their top three choices for mayor on the ballot. First choice votes are tallied, and if no candidate receives…