Book 'em: The Oscar Grant Looters

The Oakland PD has counted heads and cross-checked their data bases, and discovered that, yes, most of the idiots arrested in the Oscar Grant riot were from out-of-town: 78 Arrests In Oakland Follow Oscar Grant Verdict.

Three-quarters of the 78 people arrested in Thursday's riot in Oakland came from outside the city, Police Chief Anthony Batts said Friday.

But it was Oakland's residents and business owners - like Steven Suzio - who were left to pay the price.

The pawnshop owner paid $2,000 Friday morning to repair two broken windows and a smashed-in door at his Oakland Coin & Jewelry Exchange shop.

"I can understand everybody's being upset with the verdict," Suzio, 62, said as a glass installer pounded out repairs at his Broadway Street store. "But there's no reason to take it out on the local businesses."

The raucous protests started hours after a jury convicted former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of passenger Oscar Grant. The jury rejected the more serious options of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter.

Demonstrators damaged 100 downtown businesses. They sprayed anti-police graffiti on storefronts, broke windows, stole merchandise, set trash bins on fire and clashed with police officers from 15 Bay Area law-enforcement agencies.

That being the case, can you please please PLEASE prosecute these clowns? They weren't from Oakland, so they can't really claim to be part of some righteous community anger. They were mostly white, so they can't claim some sort of racial solidarity. In fact, black Oaklanders went out of their way to preach non-violence...and downtown still got trashed by a bunch of lily-white suburban "revolutionaries."

More important, all of the available evidence shows that this was a planned event. The usual left-wing street protest groups like International ANSWER were calling for riots for weeks leading up to the verdict. The rioters were captured with plenty of gear, including bottles of urine and feces - not the sort of thing you slip into your backpack for the commute. This was not a spontaneous eruption of rage. This was an insurrection; one that hit Oakland for no better reason than it was there.

I know many lefties in Bay Area politics harbor the progressive's Walter Mitty fantasy that they are Bad Ass Street Rebels. The hundreds of arrests that often follow disruptive street protests are often followed by mass dismissals for precisely that reason. But there's no reason for sympathy or mercy for the White Riot looters. Let's see them named, shamed, their pimply faces spread across the evening news...and then tossed into the clink.