California transit cop verdict sparks looting
LOS ANGELES/OAKLAND, California (Reuters) - 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.
The verdict prompted a peaceful protest by up to 1,000 people in downtown Oakland, which gave way after nightfall to some people looting stores, smashing car windows, throwing powerful fireworks at police and lighting fires in trash cans.
The police, numbering in the hundreds, made more than 50 arrests, but Oakland police expected that figure could double.
"This city is not the wild, wild West," Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts told a televised news conference. "This city will not tolerate this activity."...
...Looters targeted stores selling jewelry and beauty supplies and grabbed shoes from a Foot Locker store in downtown Oakland, while the phrase "Riot for Oscar" was spray-painted on a bank building, according to a Reuters eyewitness.
"It's definitely chaotic," said Sgt. J.D. Nelson, an Alameda County Sheriff spokesman, adding that Oakland's police were being helped by officers from other municipalities.
Sorry chief but I don't belive that...this is the Wild Wild West. How is stealing stuff from the Foot Locker and other store doing justice to anyone.
...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.
But don't worry....the usual suspect will help calm the situation before another person gets killed or injured....right!
"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).
If you haven’t been there California is a beautiful state. But it's also as corrupt as the day is long, as wrongheaded as can be, it's leadership is clueless, abusing productive members of society (e.g. business owners) while coddling punks like the idiots at the NAACP. Now you have an economy in shambles, the state a half trillion dollars in debt, they are starving an agricultural heaven to save a snail and then they wonder why people are leaving the state in droves. As I said to my friend that is no way to live.
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