Courtesy Oakland Police Department

The Oakland Police Department Wants You to ID this man

The Oakland Police Department released photos on Wednesday of people looting and destroying property during last week’s Oscar Grant rally in Oakland. They published 15 photos on the department website in the hopes that citizens will come forward to identify those in the photos. A $1,000 reward is being offered for each person identified.

The police department says it received these photos from protestors and people observing the rally. The photographs show alleged looters running in and out of Foot Locker, Sears and a beauty supply store carrying everything from sneakers to piles of T-shirts to, in one case, a mannequin. There is also one photo of a man breaking a Sears window.

“We need the public to come forward to give us their names so we can follow up and arrest them,” said Jeff Thomason, a spokesman for the Oakland Police Department. “I know the citizens of Oakland are very upset about what took place in their city,” he added.

Last Thursday, after the release of the verdict of involuntary manslaughter for Johannes Mehserle, a BART police officer who was accused of murdering 22-year-old Oscar Grant on a BART station platform in January 2009, protesters gathered in downtown Oakland to demonstrate. The majority of people gathered protested peacefully, but after the rally ended, a small portion of protesters looted businesses and vandalized downtown Oakland—destroying property, setting fires in trash cans and breaking storefront windows.

Police arrested 78 people that night. The majority were charged with misdemeanors, such as failure to disperse. Nine people received felony charges, including arson, property damage and burglary. The police department will make more arrests if the people in the photos can be identified.

Police are considering a variety of charges in these cases, including burglary, which is a felony, and looting. “This was a major event that took place in the city of Oakland,” Thomason said, “and we are going to go after them and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”

The photos can be seen on the Oakland Police Department’s website.