COP OUT

One winter night in Oakland nine years before a police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck, Raheim Brown and his friend Timesha Stewart, both 20, were smoking weed in a Honda, hazard lights blinking. It was 9 p.m., and two cops who had been patrolling a school dance near Skyline High School approached the car. They were Barhin Bhatt and his partner, Jonathan Bellusa, both sergeants with the Oakland School Police Department. At the time they did not know the Honda had been stolen. They would claim they decided to investigate because they thought the car was parked in a strange spot.

Pretty much everything that happened next is still in dispute. Bhatt walked up to the driver’s side, where Stewart was seated, and began speaking to her. Brown told her to drive away, reaching over and jamming a screwdriver into the ignition. Bellusa opened the passenger door and grabbed Brown by the collar to stop him. When Brown resisted, a violent struggle ensued. Bellusa believed Brown was stabbing him in the upper chest, though Stewart insists the screwdriver never left the ignition, and a forensic analysis found no strike marks on Bellusa’s shirt or vest.

“Shoot!” Bellusa yelled. He says he spotted a revolver in the passenger door, though Stewart insists there was never a gun in the car and that the one found by police had been planted after the fact. “Gun!” Bellusa shouted. Bhatt shot Brown seven times. Stewart would later recall her friend’s plea: “Help me, sis.” He passed away in that passenger seat, his hands resting on his lap.

Brown’s family demonstrated in front of Oakland Unified School District headquarters with dozens of people, calling for the disbanding of the city’s school police force. Brown’s mother, Lori Davis, described her son as a “very beautiful, loving, bright, intelligent, respectful human being.” She called his killing an “assassination.” She and Raheim’s father sued the district and eventually received a settlement, but no reforms were made to the Oakland School Police Department.

A former police lieutenant hired by the school district to conduct an investigation found that Bhatt had been “in reasonable fear” and was thus “justified in shooting Brown.” Bellusa later alleged that the school district tried to cover up the incident. Nevertheless, Bhatt was promoted to interim school police chief just months after Brown’s death; the previous chief, Peter Sarna, had resigned after he told a Black police sergeant during a drunken exchange that “the only good nigger is a dead nigger and they