A white former transit police officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in a videotaped shooting death of an unarmed black man last year in Oakland, California, sparking a wave of looting and destruction in the city on Thursday.

A Los Angeles jury deliberated for about six hours over two days before reaching their decision about the shooting on a train platform in Oakland, indicating they deemed it a tragic accident rather than the intentional act of a rogue cop.

The defendant in the racially charged trial, Johannes Mehserle, 28, testified that he mistakenly drew his gun instead of his electric Taser and shot Oscar Grant, 22, while trying to subdue him during a confrontation on New Year’s Day 2009.

But prosecutors, who sought a conviction for second-degree murder, said Mehserle had “lost all control” and shot Grant on purpose because he thought Grant was resisting arrest.

Jurors can render an involuntary manslaughter conviction if they believe the defendant lacked an intent to kill but engaged in conduct so grossly negligent that it amounts to a crime.

It generally carries a sentence of two to four years in prison, but the jury also accepted a sentencing “enhancement” for Mehserle’s use of a handgun.

“We are outraged that the jury did not find guilty of murder in a case that is so egregiously excessive and mishandled,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Mehserle, who had been free on $3 million bond, showed no reaction as the verdict was read and was immediately taken into custody. The former police officer for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) rail system faces sentencing on August 6.

By 11 p.m., the heart of downtown Oakland was a mess. A Foot Locker was smashed when looters took off with shoes and bags of athletic gear. People shoved trash cans into the street and set rubbish on fire.

Men sprayed graffiti on walls and windows on Broadway; one outside Tully’s Coffee read: “You can’t shoot us all.” Large fires billowed out of dumpsters on 20th Street and Telegraph Avenue. Windows were smashed at a Subway sandwich store, a Sears store and the empty former office of Far East National Bank.

At 20th Street and Broadway, a crowd was overrunning police and throwing bottles at officers, so authorities released smoke to disperse them, said Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts.

At least 50 people had been arrested, and more arrests were expected, Batts told reporters at a news conference.

Just before 11 p.m., Batts said there were still disturbances along the 1700 blocks of Broadway and Franklin Street and the corner of Grand Avenue and Broadway.

Batts said there were probably about 100 troublemakers out of up to 800 people who showed up at Broadway and 14th Street after Thursday’s verdict, in which former transit police Officer Johannes Mehserle, a white man, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the fatal shooting of Oscar J. Grant III, an unarmed black man, at the Fruitvale BART station on New Year’s Day in 2009. Prosecutors had sought a stronger conviction of second-degree murder.

Batts described the troublemakers as “anarchists” who came to Oakland to cause trouble and not peacefully express their views on the verdict.

“This city is not the wild, wild west,” he said. “We will allow people to protest, but we will allow it to be done peacefully.”

Workers in Oakland virtually evacuated the downtown core after news broke that the verdict was to be read, and store owners boarded up windows.

The demonstration throughout the early evening was largely peaceful but tense. People held up photos of Grant as police looked on, equipped with helmets and riot gear. A sign draped over a light post read: “Oakland says guilty.”

As darkness fell about 8 p.m. and most of the demonstrators went home, a group of people dressed completely in black and wearing black masks moved toward police.

“It was clear that they were taking an aggressive posture. … We started taking a number of rocks and bottles,” Batts said. “We then made a dispersal order.”

By 8:30 p.m., the looting began. People broke windows at a Rite-Aid drugstore. A California Highway Patrol car window was smashed, as was the window of a news television van.

Residents could be heard yelling at the younger protesters in the street to “Go home. This is our city. Don’t destroy it.”

The reaction in Los Angeles, where the trial was moved because of intense publicity in the Bay Area, was peaceful.

(Source: Reuters / LA Times)