Gloria Darden (L), mother of the late Freddie Gray, listens to media questions during a family news conference outside the courthouse in Baltimore, December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston -

By Ian Simpson and Donna Owens

BALTIMORE (Reuters) - A mistrial was declared on Wednesday in the case of a Baltimore police officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray, a black man whose killing while in custody sparked riots in April, and the city's mayor urged calm.

The judge dismissed the jury in the involuntary manslaughter trial of Officer William Porter - the first of six officers to be tried in Gray's death - after 16 hours of deliberations during which the jurors were unable to reach a verdict on any of the charges against the policeman.

Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams said an administrative judge would schedule a new trial, but said there would be no court proceedings in the case on Thursday.

Gray's death triggered rioting in the majority-black city of 620,000 people, and intensified a U.S. debate on police treatment of minorities.

On Wednesday, scores of protesters marched through downtown Baltimore following the ruling, chanting "we have nothing to lose but our chains" and "the whole damn system is guilty as Hell." Uniformed police officers took up positions throughout the city, including by the courthouse and police headquarters, and at least two demonstrators were arrested.

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Protesters march at city hall in Baltimore, December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston -

Another group of protesters gathered in Gray's neighborhood, near where a drug store was burned during the rioting, where they expressed disappointment at the outcome.

"I think everyone in Baltimore wanted a conviction," said Westley West, the pastor of the Faith Empowered Ministries Church, who is black. "I feel it sends a bad message and gives the police hope that they will get away with brutality."

Gray's family and officials, including Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, called for calm, eager to avoid a replay of the unrest that followed Gray's death.

"We are confident there will be another trial with a different jury," said Gray's stepfather, Richard Shipley. "We are calm; you should be calm too."

Porter, 26, was charged in Gray's death from a broken neck suffered while the 25-year-old man was transported in the back of a police van.

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A protestor confronts deputies from Baltimore City Sheriff's Office outside the courthouse in Ba …

The jury of five men and seven women had said on Tuesday that it was deadlocked, but Williams had told them to keep trying to reach a verdict. [L1N1453GY]

Porter, who like Gray is black, was charged for having put Gray in the back of the van without seat-belting him and with being too slow to pass on his request for medical assistance.

The officer's attorneys had argued that Porter may have been unaware of department policy mandating that detainees be seat-belted, which was put into place shortly before Gray's arrest.

Baltimore officials had come under heavy criticism for a restrained initial response to the rioting, which some observers contended allowed arson and looting to spiral out of control.

The death and its aftermath followed the police killings of black men in cities including Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, which also sparked protests, helping to spark the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

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Protesters gather around a CBS television crew outside city hall in Baltimore, December 16, 2015. R …

LEGAL EXPERTS WEIGH IN

Porter was also charged with second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. The charges against the other officers range from second-degree murder for the van's driver, to misconduct.

Gray was arrested after fleeing from police. He was put in a transport van, shackled and handcuffed, but was not secured by a seat belt, in violation of department policy. He died a week later.

Porter testified Gray told him he needed medical aid. Porter told the van's driver and a supervisor that Gray had asked for aid but none was summoned, according to testimony.

The defense argued that Porter did not believe Gray was seriously injured until the van's final stop. His lawyers have said that Porter acted as any reasonable officer would have.

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Protesters march at city hall in Baltimore, December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston -

Warren Brown, a Baltimore defense lawyer who was in the courtroom, said he was not surprised by Wednesday's decision.

"I think you will have the same scenario with the other trials," Brown said.

Seven jurors were black and five were white.

Another legal expert said he was surprised to see a mistrial declared on just the third day of deliberations.

"I thought the judge would never declare a mistrial absent a fistfight until the jury had been deliberating for six or seven days," said Jim Cohen, a professor at Fordham Law School in New York. "They chose the wrong defendant to try first."

Odessa Rose, a 49-year-old Maryland state employee, also said she was not surprised by the outcome.

"I knew it was going to be hard on both sides. It was a difficult case; it was hard," Rose, who is black, said outside the courthouse. "I feel for the state and I feel for the family of Freddie Gray."

(Reporting by Ian Simpson and Donna Owens; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker)

AAV-P7A1 amphibious assault vehicles of the Taiwan Marine Corps are seen as part of a parade during Taiwan's National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei October 10, 2011. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang

By David Brunnstrom and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration formally notified Congress on Wednesday of a $1.83-billion arms sale package for Taiwan, including two frigates, anti-tank missiles, amphibious assault vehicles and other equipment, drawing an angry response from China.

The authorization, which Reuters on Monday reported was imminent, came a year after Congress passed legislation approving the sale. It is the first such major arms sale to Taiwan in more than four years.

The White House said there was no change in the longstanding U.S. "one China" policy. Past U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan have attracted strong condemnation in China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province.

The White House said the authorization followed previous sales notifications by the administration totaling more than $12 billion under the Taiwan Relations Act.

"Our longstanding policy on arms sales to Taiwan has been consistent across six different U.S. administrations," a National Security Council spokesman, Myles Caggins, said. "We remain committed to our one-China policy," he added.

Although Washington does not recognize Taiwan as a separate state from China, it is committed under the Taiwan Relations Act to ensuring Taipei can maintain a credible defense.

The sales come at a period of heightened tension between the United States and China over the South China Sea, where Washington has been critical of China's building of man-made islands to assert expansive territorial claims.

China summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires in Beijing, Kaye Lee, to protest and said it would impose sanctions on the companies involved, state news agency Xinhua reported.

"Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. China strongly opposes the U.S. arms sale to Taiwan," Xinhua quoted Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang, who summoned Lee, as saying.

Zheng said the sales went against international law and basic norms of international relations and "severely" harmed China's sovereignty and security.

"To safeguard our national interests, China has decided to take necessary measures, including imposing sanctions against the companies involved in the arms sale," Zheng said.

The U.S. State Department said Raytheon and Lockheed Martin were the main contractors in the sales.

It was not clear what impact sanctions might have on the companies, although in 2013, Lockheed Martin signed a pact with the Thailand-based Reignwood Group to build an offshore plant to supply energy for a luxury resort on Hainan island in southern China.

"U.S. companies participating in arms sales to Taiwan gravely harm China's sovereignty and security interests," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

"China's government and companies will not carry out cooperation and commercial dealings with these types of companies."

However, previous Chinese sanction threats have not been followed up by Beijing.

China's Defense Ministry said the sale would also inevitably affect military-to-military ties, but did not elaborate.

Taiwan's defense ministry said the new weapons would be phased in over a number of years and would enable Taiwan to maintain and develop a credible defense.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the decision was based solely on Taiwan's defense needs.

"The Chinese can react to this as they see fit," he said. "This is nothing new. ... There's no need for it to have any derogatory effect on our relationship with China."

Kirby said Washington wanted to work to establish a "better, more transparent more effective relationship" with China in the region and had been in contact with both Taiwan and China on this on Wednesday. He declined to elaborate.

David McKeeby, another State Department spokesman, said the arms package included two Perry-class guided-missile frigates; $57 million of Javelin anti-tank missiles made by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin; $268 million of TOW 2B anti-tank missiles and $217 million of Stinger surface-to-air missiles made by Raytheon, and $375 million of AAV-7 Amphibious Assault Vehicles.

The State Department said the frigates were being offered as surplus items at a cost of $190 million. The package also includes $416 million of guns, upgrade kits, ammunition and support for Raytheon's Close-in Weapons System.

Analysts and congressional sources believe the delay in the formal approval of the sales was due to the Obama administration's desire to maintain stable working relations with China, an increasingly powerful strategic rival but also a vital economic partner as the world's second-largest economy.

U.S. Republican lawmakers said on Wednesday they were pleased the administration had authorized the sale but called for a more regular process for such transactions.

John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this would "avoid extended periods in which fear of upsetting the U.S.-China relationship may harm Taiwan’s defense capabilities."

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and David Brunnstrom; Addtional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, and J.R. Wu in Taipei and Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Leslie Adler and Clarence Fernandez)

Associated Press Videos
L.A. Authorities: Community Unified Over Schools

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When it comes to assessing threats, schools in New York City and Los Angeles likely have more experience than most other districts in the country.

But their reactions were dramatically different Tuesday to a similar threat of a large-scale jihadi attack with guns and bombs: LA canceled its classes, while New York dismissed the warning as a hoax.

The divergent responses from the nation's two biggest K-12 public school systems reflected what many in school security know: Deciding whether or not a threat is credible is hardly a mathematical process and the stakes in staying open or closing are high.

It is a move district officials around the country have weighed heavily following school shootings and threats. Districts regularly encounter the challenge of deciphering threats, complicated today by more sophisticated technology that can make them harder to trace.

Even when a threat is determined to be a hoax, the consequences can be a severe, with the safety of thousands of children, millions of dollars in school funding, and the message sent by each decision on the line.

It's extremely rare for a major U.S. city to close all its schools because of a threat, and it reflected the lingering unease in Southern California following the attack that killed 14 people at a holiday luncheon two weeks ago in San Bernardino.

NYC Officials: School Bomb Threat a HoaxPlay video

"If this was not ISIS, not a terror organization, they're nonetheless watching," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Wednesday on MSNBC's "Meet the Press Daily." ''And if they come to the conclusion that they can literally mail it in, call it in and disrupt large cities, they're going to take advantage of that."

But one parent bringing her daughter to school as the district reopened Wednesday said no one she knew was second-guessing the decision to close.

"I'm glad they shut it down," said Rebecca Alvarado, who was taking her 5-year-old daughter, Sofia, to an elementary school near downtown. "We're used to it, sad to say, the way the world is."

A 2014 analysis by National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm, found a 158 percent increase in the number of threats schools received over the previous year. About 37 percent of the threats were sent electronically, and nearly a third resulted in schools being evacuated. Nearly 10 percent of the threats closed school for at least one day.

The Los Angeles threat came in an email to a school board member. Authorities in New York reported receiving the same "generic" email and decided there was no danger to schoolchildren. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the threat contained "nothing credible," and New York Police Commissioner William Bratton called LA's closure a "significant overreaction."

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A sign at Hamilton High School is pictured reading "School Closed" in Los Angeles, Califor …

But the emails contained importance differences, according to U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California, a former chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism.

The Los Angeles message claimed the anonymous author had 32 accomplices, while the New York email cited 138 accomplices, Sherman said Wednesday. Both claimed to be students of the districts they were threatening, but the New York writer's terminology would not be used by someone familiar with that system, while the LA writer's would be, Sherman said.

Officials in California have defended the closure, and so did some parents. Lupe Vasquez had no patience for those on the East Coast who scoffed at the move.

"The New Yorkers were wrong to criticize us," Vasquez said Wednesday after dropping off her 8-year-old daughter at school.

With the San Bernardino attack so fresh, school officials "did what they were supposed to do," Vasquez said.

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New York Police Department officers stand guard in front of the Peter Rouget Brooklyn middle school …

Victor Asal, chairman of public administration at the State University of New York at Albany, said the decision both districts made was reflective of their respective experiences. New York has invested heavily in homeland security and terrorism response, which might make it easier to process the size of a threat, he said.

"Los Angeles doesn't have that same kind of experience," he said. "So you take the investment New York has, and you take the nervousness that Los Angeles is feeling because it's an hour away from San Bernardino, and that creates a situation where I would expect the two cities to react differently."

Vasya Petrov, 16, said he wasn't nervous to return to class at Downtown Magnets High School. The sophomore spent his surprise day off picking out a Christmas tree with family. But he said after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, thoughts of terrorism were never far from his mind.

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Associated Press writers Tami Abdollah in Washington and Christopher Weber, Amanda Lee Myers, Michael Blood, Edwin Tamara and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.