This week’s release of Johannes Mehserle, the former Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer convicted in the shooting death of unarmed 23-year-old Oscar Grant, has sparked new outrage in a case that has drawn international headlines.

On June 9, the Los Angeles Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant, along with community supporters and other activists staged a protest at the corner of Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards to condemn Mehserle’s exit from a Los Angeles jail early Monday morning.

Armed with signs reading “Stop Killer Cops,” protesters chanted “Killer cop Mehserle, we won’t forget, we won’t back down.” Jubilee Shine, of the Los Angeles Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant, called Mehserle’s release “a travesty of justice. It is a perversion. The community has no confidence in the court system to protect us against abusive, violent police officers in California.”

A woman who identified herself as Lala, a member of the Black Riders Liberation Party, agreed, saying that change can only come through civilians who are fed up with officers “constantly terrorizing us. If we don’t stop this now, there are going to be more and more brothers and sisters being killed. What are we going to do? Are we going to continue to let them kill our people? Or are we going to do something about it? Black Riders is going to do something. It is up to the people to stand up and do something with us.”

The group reassembled Saturday for an emergency town hall meeting at the Southern California Library, and again Monday morning at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, where Mehserle’s trial was held. This was followed by a march to a nearby U.S. Department of Justice building, where demonstrators attempted to put pressure on Attorney General Eric Holder, who has initiated an investigation into the case.

“Mehserle has done less than half the sentence Mike Vick served for animal abuse,” Shine said. “We demand that … federal charges of civil rights violations be brought. We further announce the initiation of a campaign in Los Angeles to establish Community Control Over the Police in the form of an all-elected, all-civilian, police control board with full authority over the LAPD in all aspects, at all levels.”

In a letter to the Justice Department, Rep. Maxine Waters, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote, “I write with grave concern for the events and procedure surrounding the People of the State of California v. Mehserle. This case, involving a Caucasian police officer’s brutal shooting of an unarmed … African-American male, has further exacerbated tensions between California’s communities of color and law enforcement authorities,” she wrote to Holder, noting that she is in full support of Rep. Barbara Lee’s request for a federal investigation into the activities preceding and following the Mehserle verdict.

Though the case is a state criminal matter, “certain factors warrant further examination by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice,” Waters continued. “Although the incident occurred in Oakland, the brutal police killing of Oscar Grant … has so resonated with my constituents in South Los Angeles, that they have organized a grassroots campaign, urging their elected officials to support a federal investigation into the facts and procedures surrounding the case. Given the level of protest and civil unrest that has resulted from the Mehserle verdict, it is critical that the Justice Department ensure that all civil rights statutes were properly enforced, and that no federal laws were violated during the course of the prosecutorial stage, jury selection and trial process.”

For Grant’s uncle Cephus Johnson and other relatives, there will be no peace of mind until “the Department of Justice picks this case up and files charges of civil rights violations,” he said, noting that the family will return to Washington, D.C. in hopes of getting more support from elected officials and to ensure that headway is being made by the department. “Then and only then will we get some accountability and justice. Then and only then will we get peace on this issue.

“This is sad day for us. We have to relive what took place on that platform every day,” Johnson added. “But, we know there is going to be pain before there is some gain. We realize that what we are experiencing, we don’t like, but in order to bring about change we must walk through it.”

On a rail platform on New Year’s Day 2009, Mehserle was videotaped shooting a prostrate Grant in the back, leading to his becoming the first law enforcement officer in California to be convicted of a killing committed on duty.

Last July, a jury with no African-Americans handed down an involuntary manslaughter verdict in the case against Mehserle, who was immediately booked into the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail and kept separate from the general population. Superior Court Judge Robert Perry rejected a prosecution request that jurors be allowed to consider first-degree murder against Mehserle, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to show the shooting of Grant was premeditated. The jury was only allowed to consider second-degree murder, voluntary or involuntary manslaughter, or find Mehserle innocent.

On Nov. 5,  Perry sentenced Mehserle to two years in prison. However, Mehserle only served seven months since then. “When [Mehserle] was sentenced ... he had served 146 days in custody — 121 days from the date of conviction to sentencing and 25 days from the date of his arrest on Jan. 13, 2009, to his release on bail on Feb. 6, 2009,” said a court minute order dated June 10. “Through Sunday, June 12, 2011, defendant Mehserle will have served 365 days in custody — 146 prior to sentencing and 219 post sentencing. He has previously been awarded 146 days of conduct credits for the time served prior to sentencing.”

On June 12, said the court document, Mehserle had earned an additional 219 days of conduct credits, for a total of 730 days of custody credits. Based on that, the court found that Mehserle’s mandated custody credits were equal to or exceeded the sentence imposed, and pursuant to Penal Code Section 1170(a)(3), “he must be released from custody” on June 13.

Mehserle’s attorney, Michael Rains, built his case by describing similar incidents in which “seven other officers before [Mehserle] had … mistakenly drew and fired [their] gun,” said motion statements. Mehserle has maintained that he meant to use a Taser, not his service revolver, when he fired at Grant, who was lying on his stomach.

Members of Grant’s family, who had urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence, still consider Grant’s killing to be murder — and they lashed out at Perry’s handling of the proceedings. “He, himself … overrided the [initial] verdict that the jury brought back,” said Johnson, in an interview Monday afternoon about Perry’s decision to throw out a gun enhancement charge, which had it stuck would have meant a mandatory three to 10 years prison sentence; involuntary manslaughter convictions call for sentences ranging from probation to four years in prison.

Perry said he did so because he was uncomfortable with the instructions he gave to the jury on a gun enhancement charge that the panel added to the involuntary manslaughter verdict. The two verdicts, he said, were in conflict because one suggests that Mehserle intended to use his weapon, while the other suggests that it was purely accidental.

In the end, Johnson said Perry overstepped his boundaries by taking on the role of both judge and jury during the preceeding, and that had Perry adhered to the jury’s initial ruling Mehserle would still be in prison today.

The verdict, Johnson said, has sent a clear message to people of color “that whatever rights you think you have, you don’t have.”

The family, he added, “is seeking to bring resolution, to get justice and to also make sure that accountability is taken for [Mehserle’s] egregious act.”

 They are also working to ensure that Mehserle does not revert back to his “normal life,” Johnson said, adding that their lives have been destroyed by the fateful day. He added that the other young men who were with Grant on the platform that day have been affected as well — their civil rights have been violated and they have to cope with the loss of a dear friend.

“They are entitled to seek justice for that,” said Johnson. “We are entitled to seek justice for it. And that is what we are determined to do.”

Caption: Lala (front), a member of the Black Riders Liberation Party, was one of a number of protesters outraged by the release of former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer Johannes Mehserle, who was convicted last year of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of an unarmed black male on New Year's Day 2009. (Photo by Leiloni De Gruy)