If you haven't just arrived from Mars, you've heard the news. The Bay Area has been under siege by protesters since January 1.

22 year old Oscar Grant was fatally shot on New Year's Eve by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle. Grant and a group of other men were involved in some sort of altercation on the train. The men were taken off the train at the Fruitvale station. Grant was handcuffed and lying face down on the platform when 27 year old Mehserle shot him.

BART has not handled this well. They initially tried to downplay the incident. They never interviewed Mehserle, and he has resigned from the force, which means BART doesn't have the authority to question him about the incident. They have taken their time investigating the incident, and not been terribly forthcoming while the investigation was ongoing.

In the meantime, protests have been breaking out on an almost daily basis, in both Oakland and San Francisco. Last week, one protest turned into a full-blown riot in downtown Oakland. Store windows were smashed, cars were burned.

The protesters portray Grant as someone just a little less holy than St Francis, despite his checkered rap sheet. Mehserle is nothing less than the devil incarnate. Accusations of racially-motivated murder are being thrown around quite frequently.

I believe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I find it very unlikely that Mehserle would have maliciously, and with pre-meditation, killed Grant, in the full view of his fellow officers, a platform full of onlookers, not to mention God knows how many cell phones.

At the same time, I get the fact that, as a white male, my life experience with the police is completely different from many people of color. Those of color certainly have a long history of reasons to distrust the police.

Hopefully, the truth will out before this thing turns into, as one commentator said, "another Rodney King incident."