Today’s march started at Union and 6th in the Union Pico/ Westlake district of Los Angeles, stopped for a rally in front of the infamous Rampart Division police station, and wrapped itself through the neighborhood and back to MacArthur Park. It was made up of an impressive and diverse group of all ages and many ethnicities.

The Back Story:

Manuel Jamines was 37 years old. He was an indigenous Guatemalan day-laborer living in the Pico Union/Westlake district in Los Angeles, who didn’t speak English or even Spanish very well. According to the police, he was drunk and was threatening a pregnant woman with a knife. Frank Hernandez, a police officer on patrol on his bicycle says that when ordered to drop the knife, in English and Spanish, Jamines raised his arms in a threatening manner, leaving Hernandez with no other alternative than to shoot him twice in the head.

As simple as that. That simple?!
Well the surrounding community doesn’t think so. Jamines belonged to a tight- knit community of several hundred indigenous refugees from war and persecution in Guatemala; living in the Westlake district. These are people who, forced by economic conditions, to leave their homes and their families behind, now find themselves being terrorized by ICE agents and the infamous LAPD Rampart Division who can’t seem to wrap its collective brain around the fact that these folk have their own language and culture and don’t necessarily speak or understand Spanish.

Problems between the community and the police have been festering for a while now, and a lot of people question Hernandez’ explanation. What do you mean you had no choice, they want to know? Reportedly the guy was falling-down drunk! And now there are witnesses who have come forward to say there was no knife! Even if there had been, the knife portrayed on the news was tiny! For that matter, Jamines, an indigenous man, was pretty tiny himself. You mean to say there was no other option than to shoot him twice in the head?

So the people hit the streets. Because that’s what you do in other countries when you have a grievance. And they were joined by local activists; some of whom have been involved for a long time in the struggle against police brutality and the culture where for generations cops have been getting away with murder.

So protests which the LAPD answered with rubber bullets, went on for several nights until Mayor Villaraigosa and the L.A. Police chief were finally forced to hold a town-hall meeting to try to appease the folk and bring calm to the neighborhood.

And in a packed elementary school auditorium, Our mayor stated that Hernandez is a hero, and William Bratton, our current police chief, coolly informed the community that the Los Angeles Police Force, one of the largest and most highly trained in the country, is not trained to take knives away from people; and instead, shooting a man point-blank in the head with a deadly weapon is acceptable behavior.

This is exactly the kind of behavior that is not acceptable to our communities, who consider that calling brutal cops “heroic” only acerbates and encourages a toxic and racist culture. Many feel that we’ve already lost too many people at the hands of law enforcement in Los Angeles and around the country, and so a march was called to demand that charges be brought against Officer Frank Hernandez of the LAPD for the fatal shooting, and to bring attention to the endemic problem of police brutality.

There was apparently some confusion; as it seems that two marches were called and planned by different organizations; and due to a lack of communication, they both took place. Both marches started at the corner of 6th Street and Union, where the murder took place, and one continued on to City Hall, while the People's March moved through the neighborhood. This caused questions and some discussion among people forced to decide which group to march with; about the fact that efforts need to be made in the future for all groups to establish communication and work together.

Even so, the fact that so many groups see the ongoing issue of police brutality in our communities as a serious enough issue to come together under one banner is encouraging evidence that We -The-People are learning and evolving into a formidable and strong movement.

I wish that the other comment were not hidden.

The area around 6th street near the Rampart station is fucked up. The people are messed up, the cops are messed up, and the whole situation is just bad. Yet, it's better than it's been in a while, at least on the surface.

The big pressure on the community is gentrification. There's definitely gentrification overflowing from downtown to the east, and from Hollywood to the north.

On the one hand, I think crime has declined - at least the open drug dealing seems to have declined. There are still other things going on down there. It's "lawless" in a bad way.

The broad police strategy in LA is "containment" - it's not prevention or rehabilitation. The goal is to contain crime in poor neighborhoods like Rampart, where, to a certain extent, the police allow crime to happen.

For example, Tom Hayden wrote that the feds were allowing MS-13 informants to commit their crimes in exchange for opportunities to make bigger busts. I would imagine that the victims of their crimes would be, directly or indirectly, the people in the community.

For example, the old Rampart scandal showed that when you set something up to stop drugs and gangs, the cops involved might become drug dealers and gangsters, because the money involved is so great, and the power of a local police force to stem the tide of drug and money is negligible. (After all, every day you have a half dozen celebrities on Entertainment Tonight promoting narco via their behavior, whether they go to rehab or not.) This wasn't isolated either - the LAPD in the past were like the gang that protected speakeasies and whorehouses.

I think Rampart and Westlake were and are part of a containment strategy that allows crime to exist in Westlake, so that it won't exist in Hancock Park.

I've seen a half dozen drug deals in Westlake, and I don't even live there.

Only one was on the street between two shady looking characters. The rest were between middle class or wealthy people in "cool" cars buying whatever they were getting.

I've seen a few johns cruising or hiring whores, and heard of one bust, in Westlake. The news that's not news: they were middle class people cruising Westlake to get their jollies.

Cops definitely do arrest people - but I've seen more arrests of food vendors and prostitutes than drug dealers. I've only heard of one arrest of a john.

I actually feel sorry for the cops there. Imagine how shitty your job would be if it were to help concentrate and regulate crime in a community, but not do it so harshly that the crime would move to another area (where there's more political power). The immorality of the situation could drive you to drink, or hate, or something harmful.

You'd think they'd have an easy time busting the drug dealers and fake ID sellers, because they sell their stuff across the street from the Police Safety building in the park, and it's right outside of the train station. It must be tougher than I thought.

It seems like there was a big city-led effort to gentrify the area. The lofts in the concrete building opened up, and that whole area is an attempt at gentrification in decline. Luna Sol was booted and replaced by a more expensive restaurant. Tamale vendors were co-opted into that tamale shop - so now the street vendors sell pupusas. Home Depot went in, and some days there are more day laborers than cars in the parking lot. On the eastern end, a lot of expensive apartments and condos went up.

That has to put some pressure on the cops - entire buildings full of whiny middle class turds complaining about the jornaleros roaming around. The same people were doing lines of cocaine and huge bongloads in college, and helped fund the rise of the big LA gangs. I'm sure the cops love the support from that community. (It's an element of the community that supports racial profiling, which makes certain kinds of illegal policing easier.)

I don't know if the cop did this in cold blood, or if it was an accident. All I know is that it's weird.

It's weird that a police station ensconced in an area with the MS-13 and 18th St gangs, two of the largest emerging crime syndicates in the nation (and in Central America), has officers who can't handle a small drunk guy with a pocketknife.

What the fuck is up with that?

Ha! Cops going to college? That's a good one...

I'm talking about the condos going up near Good Sam hospital. That's going to be a political support base for police in situations like this, when someone gets killed or beat who may not be guilty of anything - or even if they were, not so dangerous to warrant this much force.

Ive seen the same split in Immigrant Rights marches where different groups lead crowds of people in opposite directions. Wether its ignorance amongst organizers or a police effort to divide the crowds, people just have to stick together. I once asked a gentleman leading a rally why they split up from the other group, his response was that "they" were marching for different reasons. I told him i thought we were all there for the same purpose, and all he did was talk down to me and told me to educate myself like i was some kind of fool. that really bothered me because i knew the general public is not very politically involved, and to categorize and divide ourselves makes the effort pretty pointless. what police dont want is unity, and by acting like this and getting too specific makes their job easier.

Ive seen the same split in Immigrant Rights marches where different groups lead crowds of people in opposite directions. Wether its ignorance amongst organizers or a police effort to divide the crowds, people just have to stick together. I once asked a gentleman leading a rally why they split up from the other group, his response was that "they" were marching for different reasons. I told him i thought we were all there for the same purpose, and all he did was talk down to me and told me to educate myself like i was some kind of fool. that really bothered me because i knew the general public is not very politically involved, and to categorize and divide ourselves makes the effort pretty pointless. what police dont want is unity, and by acting like this and getting too specific makes their job easier.