Zusha Elinson at the Bay Citizen continues to do great work on the BART Police shooting, and today he’s got a scoop: The audio of the incident gave him the names of the officers involved. OF course, BART can’t confirm or deny anything, as is typical — but the fact that we now know that the shooter was James A. Crowell, who had been on the force for just 18 months, gives some further insight into what happened. I’ve argued for years that the BART Police lack the training and the experience to know when to use lethal force, and this “newbie,” as other officers called him perhaps reacted too quickly to a threat that could have been defused.
At any rate, the whole thing demonstrates a fundamental point of politics: Cover ups don’t work. Information gets out eventually, and the people who are trying to suppress it just look bad.