"We can’t even trust the people who are supposed to be our protectors," said Skyline senior Cassie Davis, who attended the rally.

What began as a peaceful rally at the Fruitvale BART station, the site of the shooting on Jan. 1, eventually morphed into a march down International Boulevard to BART headquarters in downtown Oakland, where violence and rioting broke out between protesters and police in riot gear.

Officer Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant III, 22, of Hayward, in the back as he lay unarmed on the ground on the Fruitvale BART platform. Mehserle was later arrested on Jan. 13 near Carson City, Nev.

Skyline junior Veronica Hurtado was returning from San Francisco on the same train as Grant. According to her, a fight broke out on the packed train after the Lake Merritt station. Grant was involved in the fight. When the train stopped at the Fruitvale station, the fight poured out onto the platform. Hurtado stepped out to watch the fight. After about five minutes, she said, BART police pulled apart the group of fighters.

"They threw him (Grant) on the ground and one of the officers put his knee on his throat and handcuffed him. He kept saying, ‘Don’t tase me, I have a four year old,’ then all of a sudden the other cop (Mehserle) shot him."

Questions remain as to what caused Mehserle to open fire.

Multiple videos were recorded by passengers of a nearby BART train. Those videos were obtained by KTVU-TV and were also quickly available on YouTube.

A rally was organized on short notice for Wednesday, Jan. 7, a week after the shooting had happened, to protest the sluggish response from the BART officials concerning the situation.

The majority of protesters found out about the rally the same way as Esteban Cuaya, a former Skyline student who currently attends YES High School.

"I was at work and got a text from a friend about the shooting. I saw the video on YouTube and then saw a link to the Facebook page about the rally. That’s how I got here," recalled Cuaya.

This grassroots method was very effective and resulted in several hundred protesters coming to Fruitvale BART, a huge turnout considering the short notice. Because the rally had no clear organizing body, other groups were able to take hold of portions of the crowd and transform the rally into a march down International Boulevard.

A splinter group ended up at BART headquarters at Eighth and Madison streets, where some protesters crashed a Dumpster into a cop car, set the Dumpster on fire, and to flip over the cruiser before riot cops shot tear gas into the crowd, chasing them down 8th Street towards Broadway and police headquarters. The crowd dispersed, then came together again an hour later at City Hall.

The rally earlier in the day was peaceful but BART closed down the Fruitvale station, causing many people coming to the rally to end up at other stations.

Oscar Grant’s sister, along with members of the NAACP, Coalition Against Police Executions, and the Asian Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership addressed the crowd. Many speakers demanded criminal action be taken against Mehserle at the state level and not by Oakland or BART, the reason being that many have a lack of trust in the OPD.

"We as a community need to take a look at the police system and what they are doing and how they are trained," said Victor Vasquez, a community organizer from East Oakland and member of the community group "Vagos." Vagos is Spanish slang for a teen who is always in the streets.Vasquez mentioned the officer-involved shootings of Jose Luis Buenrostros, 15, and Garry King Jr., 20, by Oakland police.

On March 19, Buenrostros was shot in the back as he ran away from police officers on 79th Street and Rusdale Avenue. Garry King Jr. was shot in the back Sept. 20, 2007 as well in north Oakland. Officers opened fire when they believed he was pulling a gun from his trousers; in reality he was pulling his pants up, according to the Oakland Tribune. He has a memorial at Children’s Hospital.

"This is not an isolated incident; this goes back all the way to Bobby Hutton’s death," said Vasquez. Hutton was a 16-year-old Black Panther Party member who was shot and killed by the Oakland police in 1966.

"The police don’t live in the community, they don’t know the community," said Vasquez. The reason for this, he claims, is that Oakland’s cops are among the highest paid in the state with a starting salary from $70,000 to $90,000 a year. That coupled with Mayor Ron Dellums’ effort to increase the size of the police department means that many officers don’t live in Oakland.

"There is definitely a disconnect between the community and the police force," said Josh Fisher, the site organizer at Skyline’s Youth Center.

"They say ‘to protect and serve’ but protect and serve who? The police are not looking at the root causes of why people are acting this way."