Watch video before judging BART officer in fatal shooting

Before rushing to judge the fatal Jan. 3 BART police shooting of Shaleem Tindle on a West Oakland sidewalk, watch the video.

The video from the body camera Officer Joseph Mateu was wearing when he fired three times into Tindle’s back.

It’s the sort of video that police agencies too often keep under wraps during an ongoing investigation, but this time released last week after excerpts leaked out. The sort of video that the public deserves to see every time a cop fires a weapon, whether it supports the officer’s account or not.

In this case, the video is strong evidence — not of police misconduct, but of why Mateu fired.

Investigations by Oakland Police, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and BART internal affairs are ongoing. There’s still a lot we don’t know. So, we shouldn’t rush to final judgment.

But watch the entire 50 seconds of the video and ask yourself, what would you have done differently?

For, if Mateu had not fired, he or the man with whom Tindle was wrestling for a gun on the ground might have ended up dead instead.

Some have compared this incident to one on Jan. 1, 2009, when BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle fatally shot Oscar Grant III in the back as he lay face down on the Fruitvale station platform.

In that case, there was no question whether the killing was justified. It wasn’t. The issue was whether Mehserle intended to kill Grant or had mistakenly reached for his service revolver rather than his stun gun.

Grant in 2009 and Tindle in 2018 were both shot in the back. And both incidents were caught on video. But that’s where the similarities end. These cases are not the same. Not even close.

The video from the latest incident begins with Mateu inside the station lobby investigating a fare-evasion case when a gunshot is heard. Six seconds later, there’s another. People are screaming and rushing inside.

“What happened? … Where? … Where? … Where? … Where? … Where?” Mateu shouts as he runs out of the station in the direction of the gunfire.

“Code 33. Got shots fired at West Oakland. Shots fired,” he radios as he dashes across the parking lot. As he crosses Seventh Street, he relays the location, “Seventh and Chester, Seventh and Chester.”

Two guys are wrestling on the sidewalk corner. Mateu raises his gun. “Let me see your hands,” he shouts. “Let me see your hands now.” “Both of you, both of you, let me see your hands. Let me see your hands. Let me see your hands.”

What appears to be a gun is briefly visible on the sidewalk as the two men seem to be fighting for it. And, again, for the fifth time in seven seconds, Mateu shouts, “Let me see your hands.”

The two men keep struggling. Ten seconds after issuing his first warning, Mateu fires the three shots, and again shouts, for the sixth time, “Let me see your hands.”

Tindle rolls over on his back and puts his hands up momentarily before collapsing. What appears to be a gun is again visible on the sidewalk.

It’s easy to understand the grief of Tindle’s family members. He was just 28. But the public information available certainly doesn’t justify their call for murder charges against Mateu.

To watch the body camera video of the fatal Jan. 3 police shooting, go to http://bayareane. ws/bartshooting video.

When an officer hears shots, sees two people wrestling for a gun on the ground and they both ignore his orders to show their hands, he must make a difficult, split-second decision.

It also turns out that Tindle had just shot the other man in the leg, according to witnesses. When someone starts shooting others, he should recognize the risk that he might end up dead.

What is clear is that the Mateu shooting is nothing like the one at Fruitvale BART station nine years earlier. While a cellphone recording from 2009 showed Mehserle shooting a defenseless man, Mateu’s body camera shows an officer trying to stop a potentially deadly situation.

Civil rights attorney John Burris, who represented Grant’s family, now represents Tindle’s. Once again, he has filed a wrongful death claim against BART, the first step before a lawsuit.

Burris says Mateu acted too hastily, that he couldn’t see the gun on the ground and that he didn’t have enough information to justify firing.

BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas says the gun on the ground is visible on the video. Had Tindle managed to fire it, “You have a dead individual and we’re investigating a homicide.”

And critics would be asking why Mateu didn’t stop it.