By Paul T. Rosynsky
Oakland Tribune
LOS ANGELES — Former BART police officer Marysol Domenici, the second police officer to arrive at the scene where Oscar Grant III eventually was killed, began her testimony today, giving the jury its first glimpse of how a prosecutor intends to attack the credibility of the officers who witnessed one of their own kill an unarmed man.
Deputy District Attorney David Stein wasted no time in attacking Domenici’s testimony, immediately pointing out that statements she gave in previous hearings and interviews did not match with what was depicted in recorded scenes of the events that led to the 22-year-old Hayward man’s death.
By his third or fourth question, Stein suggested Domenici, who was fired from the BART police force earlier this year, exaggerated her description of the chaos on the Fruitvale BART platform in hopes of justifying the killing that resulted the charge of murder against her fellow officer, Johannes Mehserle.
“Did you exaggerate the conduct of those on the platform in an attempt to justify the shooting of Oscar Grant?” Stein asked.
“No,” Domenici replied.
Stein initially focused on Domenici’s description of what she saw when she was called to the platform early Jan. 1, 2009. The officer said that she immediately was confronted by 50 people on the platform who were coming off a Dublin-bound BART train and that she “felt threatened” by their presence.
“I saw people on the train and people on the platform,” she said. “I remember people on the train calling me lady cop, and they were singing the lady cop song as I ran by.”
Stein then showed a videotape recorded by a platform security camera that showed Domenici running down an empty platform with no passengers exiting the train.
Asked about the 50 people she saw, Domenici said they could not be seen on the video.
Throughout his questioning, as Stein showed various videos from different angles, he repeatedly asked Domenici to point out the 50 people she had just described as being on the platform threatening her.
She never could, and at one point she said, “When I said the platform, to me the train is an extension of the platform.”
Domenici’s testimony immediately brought tension to a courtroom that earlier in the week had been relatively calm as experts testified about the training police officers receive and how they are supposed to react to certain situations.
Each time she was questioned, Domenici gave rambling answers justifying her reactions, sparking several requests by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry for her to limit her answers to the question asked.
“Listen carefully to his questions,” Perry said at one point.
“Try to focus on the questions that are asked,” the judge said later.
Stein painstakingly guided Domenici through the actions she took once she arrived on the platform, comparing what she said on the witness stand with what can be seen in videos of the events.
Eventually, Domenici admitted that Grant and his friends complied with her various orders and “calmed down” once her partner, Anthony Pirone, took out his Taser and pointed it at the group.
“They never struggled with me,” she said.
Stein also used Domenici to attack a defense contention that Grant, at one point, put his hands on Domenici’s forearm.
Domenici said she does not remember that Grant ever touched her but said she was told by her attorney that a video shows he did.
When shown the video, Domenici said she could not clearly see Grant touching her.
“I don’t remember Grant grabbing my arm,” she said.
Domenici said she remembered the platform where Grant was killed being loud as various passengers called her disparaging names and that Grant and his friends kept saying, “That’s (expletive) up.”
She admitted that Pirone never told her to search Grant and his friends when he asked her to watch them as he went to the train to get another passenger. She also said she never searched Grant and his friends.
Although Domenici said she did not see Mehserle fire the shot that killed Grant, she remembered hearing a loud noise she described as a “firework.” She said she immediately knew someone had been shot but did not know who.
But, she said, she never took out her gun because she knew quickly that another officer had not been shot.
“My first reaction was to look at the officers faces because I didn’t know who got shot,” she said. “I just heard people saying, ‘He got shot, he got shot.’”
Asked if that prompted her to take out her gun for safety, Domenici said it did not.
“Nobody had their guns out, none of the other officers,” she said as she explained why she had not grabbed for her weapon.
Domenici will continue testifying Friday followed by Pirone.
Copyright 2010 Contra Costa Newspapers