I couldn’t sleep last night. Perhaps I shouldn’t have read the Sunday newspaper before bed. As I lay there, the full moon blazed into my window like a spotlight. I usually enjoy the silvery glow it casts on the leaves and rooftops. But in light of the BART shooting, all I could see was a city exposed. The first mistake was the shot that killed Oscar Grant on Jan. 1; then there was BART’s silence; officer Johannes Mehserle’s resignation; the destructive Downtown riots; Alameda County’s D.A. Tom Orloff’s need for two more weeks to charge Mehserle with anything; and the epitome of insults to Oakland’s injuries by “Mayor” Dellums—his stagnation after the shooting, his patronizing response to the riots and his audacious remarks about considering an offer (should it arise) to leave Oakland and work for Obama. All this has happened since the new year, when the moon was a sliver of hope for change.

A glimmer of hope came this weekend, with the state Attorney General Jerry Brown’s announcement that he’d “closely monitor” the killing of an unarmed man by the BART police, and the onset of a legislative campaign to create a BART civilian oversight board for BART police. But all these actions are in retrospect. The first murder of the year was another outbreak of urban anxiety that needs to be evaluated by the light of day. Even though I’m hearing that Mehserle might’ve though he reached for a taser and not a gun, that the BART police entered the Oscar Grant situation already keyed up from earlier disturbances along the tracks, there’s a psychological disconnect happening between the so-called “authorities” of our city and the people who share the streets with them.

For some insight on how patrolling can lead to (fatal) panic, I looked to my great-grandfather’s police log. It’s a long, thin notebook with pages turned parchment from age. He recorded all the happenings on his Downtown Oakland beat like an accountant keeps a ledger. Last night I peered at the fountain pen scrawl for signs of the city I know these ninety years later. A lot seemed to have remained the same: Officer Thomas Oakes wrote about warm weather, traffic congestion and on March 2, 1918, he woke up a “wino” outside of Heinhold’s Saloon. Not much difference there.

Yet my great-grandfather’s police log reveal no moments of anxiety. There are no mentions of times he felt his life was in danger. I still don’t know if he carried a gun. He wrote about walking the beat with his wife Ella on occasion. There are also signs of an integrated economy with the city’s ethnic groups. My great-grandfather was a bushy-haired, dark Irishman who frequented an “Italian dance” (Mar. 24) and stopped by his Chinese dentist for an appointment (May 22). Oakland was a diverse city, even then. And there was certainly conflict; by the time my great-grandfather patrolled the Chinatown centered on Webster and Eighth streets, Chinese settlements in Oakland had moved several times over. They had burned mysteriously or were strong-armed out of Downtown pockets and labor markets by the Exclusion Act of 1887. Even the most mundane of Officer Oakes’ entries reflect this antagonism, since his only description of the merchant who stopped a thief on was “China man.” My great-grandfather seemed like a loving man in many respects, who helped his wife around their house on Grove Street and “joked too hard” with friends. But unfamiliarity translates into fear, and that process is a tricky thing.

In fact, his descriptions of the people he sees on the street reveal an interesting subtext. The anxiety is in the naming of things. He addresses them by surname (as in the case of his fellow officers), first name (of family and friends), and race (without the detailed descriptions afforded to white citizens). One day, he “straightened out a row” between a “Hawaiian” and a Mrs. Bird. On another, at the corner of Harrison and Second streets, he encountered a “(Mexican)” drunk. And on the same corner days earlier, he “quizzed three soldiers about [a] negro place close by.” It’s not clear what the man was doing wrong, but in the next sentence he says that he went to the “negro’s house [to] warn him to discontinue” whatever it was.

Such characterizations of the colorful, Oakland citizenry differ from the “light” man he caught in a hold up on Alice Street. I’m guessing he was white because aside from the above distinction, his description appeared in full: “Six feet, khaki suit and cap, green tie, blue automatic revolver.” Perhaps the gravity of the crime in this instance required a more detailed run-down. But they’re glimmers of a dynamic we’ve seen in the present, and when the stakes are so much higher. The presence of guns and the escalation of violence are just two indicators that the country is facing tougher times. Our delineations of otherness keep us from relating to one another as individuals. It’s part of the reason why East Oaklanders keep calling for cops to walk their beats and for citizens to keep watch over their police to ensure that they represent the community and not execute them in a moment of panic—when one’s immediate impressions end up pulling the trigger.

I wait in anticipation, then, of the BART police’s findings. Their investigation, said chief Gary Gee yesterday, should end this week. It’s my hope that they’ll conclude what all of us should already know, that a man was unjustly shot while on his back and on the ground. The subtext, as the videos show, is that Oscar Grant died because he was a black man. We also know—after looking beyond the color of his skin—that his middle name was Juliuss. He had a warm smile with a little gap in between his teeth. And those who knew him say he was a loyal friend.