Ex-officer testifies at Mehserle trial

(06-18) 04:00 PDT Los Angeles - --

A former BART police officer who was standing several feet away when a colleague killed Oscar Grant testified Thursday that the scene at Oakland's Fruitvale Station that night was so chaotic that she had been on the verge of using her Taser on one of Grant's friends.

Marysol Domenici became the first officer who was with Johannes Mehserle on the train platform early New Year's Day 2009 to take the stand at his murder trial. She came under immediate attack from prosecutor David Stein, who accused her of justifying what Mehserle did by exaggerating the danger that police faced as they detained Grant and his friends after a fight on a train.

Stein's efforts to discredit Domenici came in advance of the expected testimony of her then-partner, Anthony Pirone, who will be a pivotal witness in the case. It was Pirone who detained Grant and four friends, made the decision to arrest Grant, and helped Mehserle restrain him in the seconds before the shooting.

Both Pirone and Domenici were fired by BART earlier this year, Pirone for his actions that night and Domenici for allegedly not being truthful in how she recounted the shooting in statements afterward. They are appealing their dismissals.

The defense says Grant's violent resistance prompted Mehserle to decide to shock him with a Taser, but that in the midst of a chaotic scene he accidentally pulled out his service pistol and fired. Stein says the shooting was intentional, that Grant never resisted officers and that Mehserle allowed his emotions to cloud his judgment.

'Mrs. Officer'

Domenici and Pirone were already at Fruitvale Station when the fight was reported. Domenici testified that Pirone had gone up to the platform first and started to detain the men. When she arrived, she said, train riders began ridiculing her by singing the popular song "Mrs. Officer" by Lil Wayne.

Pirone, she said, told her to watch Grant and his friends, who were against a wall. She said the men had not been trying to fight her or get away, but that she had to raise her voice to get them to sit down. She quoted Grant as complaining repeatedly about what was happening.

She said she had not seen the shooting because she had been dealing with other men, including a friend of Grant's who she said had tossed a cell phone in her direction. She was about to shock him with her Taser, she said, when he was tackled by another BART officer.

Stein took his biggest shot at Domenici by quoting her testimony at Mehserle's preliminary hearing last year. She said then that large groups of people had poured out of the BART train as she arrived on the platform. Stein then rolled video footage showing Domenici running along the platform, which was empty.

Before Domenici testified, Stein called to the stand a use-of-force expert, Sean McCann, to talk about how officers should stay calm and use as little force as needed when arresting suspects.

Surprise testimony

McCann may have given a boost to the defense, however, when he testified in cross-examination that he had once drawn his gun on a suspect during a fight without realizing he had done so.

McCann, who taught at the Napa police academy when Mehserle trained there in 2006, said the incident happened when he was a Berkeley police officer and got into a struggle with an unarmed robbery suspect on the street.

"You have any memory of drawing your gun?" defense attorney Michael Rains asked.

"No," McCann said.

After a fight that spilled across traffic lanes and into a dark alley, McCann said, he put the suspect in a choke hold with his left arm and said, "It's over." Then he looked up to see his pistol in his right hand.

Stein wasn't prepared for McCann's personal account, and sought to minimize any impression it left with jurors.

He had McCann detail the whole battle and highlighted how it differed from the Fruitvale Station incident, in which Stein says Grant - a man of slight build - was being arrested on a lighted platform by a pair of 250-pound officers for an alleged misdemeanor.

The robbery suspect in Berkeley, McCann said, was 6-foot-5 and 280 pounds and high on crack cocaine. He had beaten an elderly man, and McCann had to confront him alone.

E-mail Demian Bulwa at dbulwa@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle