SAN FRANCISCO -- A raucous crowd of demonstrators protesting the fatal police shooting of a man on a BART platform stormed into the Civic Center Station in San Francisco Monday afternoon and caused major service delays as they tussled with police and shouted racial epithets at transit officials.

Riot police eventually drove them out of the station, but the unruly mob reconvened at the 16th Street Mission Station. Service was disrupted at the Civic Center, 16th Street and Powell Street stations.

The protesters were "bent on disrupting BART service and they succeeded," BART spokesman Linton Johnson said. "They don't care about people who are trying to get home to their lives, trying to get home to their families." At times, trains were permitted to stop and passengers to disembark, but no passengers were let on those trains.

The protesters gathered at the Civic Center Station at around 4:30 p.m. to protest the July 3 killing of Charles Blair Hill, a 45-year-old transient who allegedly threw a bottle at two BART officers and pulled a knife before one officer shot him to death on the Civic Center Station platform.

The protesters marched around the Civic Center platform shouting "no justice, no peace," according to witnesses and BART officials. Some of the demonstrators then boarded a train and blocked a doorway for 10 minutes, preventing the train from leaving. The protesters yelled at and shoved BART security guards who tried to corral them. One man climbed on top of the train before security guards pulled him down.

After the doorway was cleared and the train departed, BART ordered trains to not stop at the station. About two dozen BART police dressed in riot gear arrived shortly after 5 p.m. and herded the rest of the demonstrators out of the station with the help of San Francisco police officers.

Commuters rushed from Civic Center to the nearby Powell Street Station, which also had to be closed because of overcrowding.

More than a dozen protesters reconvened at the 16th Street Mission Station, where they also disrupted service, Johnson said. Nobody was hurt in the altercation.

As he spoke to reporters, several white protesters called Johnson, who is African American, "Uncle Tom," and a "self-conflicted blackie."

BART riders trying to get home jammed into the Powell Street Station, prompting officials to close the gates to prevent overcrowding on the platform. The Powell Street cable car turnaround was also closed briefly. All BART service returned to normal by 8 p.m.

The 16th Street Station reopened a few minutes after 7 p.m. Flyers urging BART to disband its police force were littered throughout the station. "Pigs Kill. Kill Pigs" was written in red paint on one of the columns near the BART gates.

Johnson said a citizens review board created by BART after the 2009 fatal shooting of an unarmed passenger, Oscar Grant, by then-BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle was already looking at the recent shooting.