It’s day 5 of self-imposed confinement/convalescence at the apartment and I’m not losing my mind just yet. I watched the great 2013 film Fruitvale Station Thursday night.

22-year-old Oscar Grant III was shot to death at the Fruitvale BART stop in Oakland by a trigger-happy Bay Area transit cop on New Year’s Day 2009. This movie builds on the real-life event with a fictional drama depicting the 24 hours of Grant’s life leading up to his tragic death. It’s really well done. Ocatvia Spencer is especially good in her role as the victim’s mother.

Actual cell-phone video clips shot by people on the train and platform in the moments before Grant was killed are shown at the start of the film. I think it’s indisputable the cop was in the wrong (he did 11 months in jail on a horribly lenient involuntary manslaughter conviction) but I can’t help but think the hostile mob-like atmosphere stirred up by onlookers contributed in a negative way to how the incident played out.

That’s not even a shred of an excuse for law enforcement to involve a gun in a situation that had no need for one but if you see the various video clips, the cops were made to feel boxed in. I suppose they deserved a very animated response from the audience based on their over-aggressive handling of a pretty routine inquiry. The cops got escalation in a moment that needed calm because of their initial hostility and it spun outta control. It’s just weird these days with the cell phones and people’s inclination to document and put their verbal two cents in without considering what they’re doing to stoke the coals of tension.

The other reaction to this movie is that it foreshadowed much more of what was to come in this country in terms of awareness, backlash and greater discussion of white law enforcement officers killing young black men without justification. The movie will leave you feeling outrage about how these common interactions can go so bad – and yet we keep hearing about them over and over again.

The final thought I had was to wonder how it’s possible Obama’s Justice Department didn’t successfully bring civil rights charges in the case. While there’s still hope Eric Garner’s family will get relief from the feds to remedy clear injustice at the local level, it’s hard to see how the US DOJ couldn’t advance a case in Grant’s killing.

I’ve listened to college hoops games on the radio the last two nights and will do so again tonight. Last night, I listened to Kristyn Brundidge and Dante Guarneri call Columbia’s loss at Princeton on WKCR-FM. Columbia is all but out of the Ivy hunt as a result which is a bummer. They can still play spoiler, however, when they close out their regular season sked a week from tonight at home against Yale.

Princeton offered “free pizza for all students” in advance of he Columbia game and asked fans to wear orange t-shirts.

The night before, I listened to John Minko work St. John’s/DePaul solo at the building formerly known as the Rosemont Horizon. Mink remarked that “you can see the planes land” from the arena’s parking lot given its proximity to O’Hare. The Johnnies lost by eight and fell to 1-15 in the Big East. Despite a near-certain last place finish in the league, St. John’s still has Big Dance pipe dreams given that the conference lets all teams participate in the Big East Tourney. The tournament winner gets an auto bid in the Dance field of 68.

Attendance for the Thursday nighter at Rosemont was announced at 4817 which means there were about 15-thousand empty seats. DePaul’s new, more logically-sized and sited hoops venue is set to open in time for the season after next.