Possible Bomb Today at Law Office of Calif. Civil Rights Attorney
The top four floors of a 12-story office building in Oakland, Calif., was evacuated today after a suspicious package was personally delivered to the office of civil rights attorney John Burris this morning by an unknown person. The incident is the latest in a series of disturbing developments as many members of the public apparently draw a connection between his work and an unrelated massacre of four police officers by an at-large parolee 10 days ago.
Burris—who represents the family of Oscar Grant III in a high-profile wrongful death case against Bay Area Rapid Transit over the fatal shooting of Grant at a BART transit station Jan. 1 (a white on-duty police officer is charged)—wasn’t in his office as the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad ordered the evacuation, the Oakland Tribune reports. The building also houses the Oakland Tribune.
Subsequent coverage reports that the package was indeed suspicious, but harmless. It contained wires and parts of a radio, Burris says, and was left by a man who may have a history of such behavior, according to the newspaper.
However, the box “frightened everyone in his office,” Burris tells KTVU.
They didn’t know the man who dropped off an approximately 1-foot-square package at around 11 a.m. today, according to the Tribune article.
Grant’s death has become a touchstone for many who see a problem in the way that police have too frequently treated African-Americans for many years past and are angry, writes a New American Media columnist in an article published in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. Although the officer involved has been charged with murder, many in the black community feel justice has been slow to unwind in his case. (Meanwhile, supporters of the officer, who has pleaded not guilty, feel he has been harshly treated.)
Now locals of all races have frequently drawn a parallel between Grant’s death and the shootings of four police officers on March 21, writes columnist David Muhammad, who himself is African-American and grew up in Oakland. While Lovelle Mixon—the at-large parolee who himself was gunned down on March 21 as he resisted arrest—may not have even thought of Grant as he allegedly shot and killed the officers, observers have mentally linked the two, seeing something of a cause-and-effect situation between Grant’s death and Mixon’s claimed police massacre, Muhammad explains.
“The tension in Oakland since the murder of Oscar Grant had amassed into a powder keg, and it ignited,” Muhammad writes. “Whether Mixon lit it intentionally we may never know, but it was lit.”
Related coverage:
San Francisco Chronicle: “Delay likely in ex-BART cop’s murder case”
Bay Area News Group: “Oakland cop shot by parolee is taken off life support”
ABAJournal.com: “Cop Charged With On-Duty Murder in Transit Shooting Captured on Cell Video”
Last updated at 7:30 p.m. on April 1 to accord with news coverage.
