Only ten days after a jury found former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the killing of Oscar Grant on New Years Day 2009 BART and Oakland police officers killed Fred Collins who was wielding a knife and threatening the officers near the same Fruitvale BART station where Grant was killed.

While the official story from the BART and Oakland Police Departments is that five police officers, two from BART and three, from Oakland killed Collins after he was reported to have two knives near the station, a witness says there may have been as many as ten officer shooting multiple bullets into Collins.

Unlike the shooting of Oscar Grant there were no video cameras at the scene and the killing has received relatively little press.

Following a 911 call the BART police were the first on the scene. They chased Collins and unsuccessfully attempted to taser him on at least two occasions. When they were unsuccessful and when Collins turned towards them with the knives they shot him multiple times and killed him.

What I don’t get is how five or more police officers armed with guns and tasers cannot stop one man, carrying only two knives, without killing him. Even if the man was attempting to commit suicide by cop as one witness reported there were enough police available to surround him and force him to drop the knives. Police, if sufficiently trained (and the BART pollce are notorious for not being well trained), can talk a man into surrendering his weapons. Certainly there was no need for multiple shots. In the worst case, if a man is threatening me with a knife, and I am genuinely afraid that he will kill me, I move myself out of arm’s distance if I am that close to him and either talk him into surrendering the knives or I shoot him in the leg. If he is shot in the leg he will fall over and be unable to stab me. There is no need for multiple fatal shots.