Revolutionaries at Work in Project : Slaying aftermath: Ramona Gardens residents fear that Communist organizers will stir up gang members.

In the days since 19-year-old Arturo Jimenez was slain by sheriff’s deputies at the Ramona Gardens housing project in East Los Angeles, residents have been besieged by outsiders: news crews, police, bureaucrats, social workers and politicians.

Among the least welcome and most unexpected, however, has been a small cadre of revolutionary Communist organizers who have descended on the tight-knit Latino community with pamphlets, petitions, newspapers and banners.

While the rest of the world seems to have thawed in the spirit of perestroika, residents of the 497-unit complex expressed concern Tuesday that “groups with little red flags and a hammer and sickle on them” were seeking to exploit last weekend’s shooting to further their own political agenda.

“My reaction was, ‘Well, thank you very much, but we don’t need any liberators of the oppressed here,’ ” said Father Juan Santillan, priest of nearby St. Lucy’s Catholic Church. “All of a sudden there’s a death and they want to come in and take advantage of the sentiments of hurt and suffering.”

Santillan was particularly worried that radical groups would incite some of the project’s gang members to more violence. One “homeboy,” Santillan said, even hurled a beer bottle Monday, allegedly at the urging of a revolutionary organizer, that hit the priest in the back.

“We don’t need anyone else to come in and provoke us,” said Santillan, who was not injured in the incident and added that he believed it was directed against a TV cameraman. “That only categorizes us and gives more strength to the notion that we are a violent community.”

The Ramona Gardens resident council took the matter so seriously that leaders changed the time of Monday’s public meeting with Councilman Richard Alatorre in an effort to thwart what they feared would be a disruption of the proceedings.

Instead of a 6:30 p.m. meeting in the Ramona Gardens auditorium, Alatorre appeared at 4:30 p.m. Still, nearly 200 residents who had not heard of the change gathered at the originally scheduled hour. Some members of revolutionary groups tried to raise questions, residents said, but were told by community leaders that the meeting was for tenants of Ramona Gardens.

“The residents don’t want to be used by those organizations for any advancing of their propaganda,” Alatorre said in an interview. “I think it’s fair to say the residents know they’re not there for constructive reasons.”

Most residents seemed to think the campaign was the work of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which has had a long and contentious history with police in Los Angeles.

A reporter for the party’s newspaper, The Revolutionary Worker, has been at the project for the last several days, but declined to comment on the group’s involvement. Libros Revolucion, a Los Angeles bookstore that promotes the party’s ideology, was closed Tuesday.

“They’ve been out there trying to create anti-police sentiment,” said Sgt. Ron Shoop, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck station. “But we haven’t had any run-ins with them--just letting them do their own thing.”

One neighbor confronted one of the revolutionary organizers and seized two red banners that were being circulated among members of Big Hazard, the project’s resident gang. One banner, about 3 feet by 6 feet, said, “It’s Right to Rebel in Memory of Smokey,” referring to Jimenez’s nickname. At least 50 members of the gang had signed their names to it.

The other banner said, “No (peace) 4 Racist Pig System,” in English and Spanish. In the upper left-hand corner was the salutation, “To Our Sisters and Brothers in Struggle in Ramona Gardens.”

“Our kids wouldn’t write that--it’s not in their vocabulary,” said the woman who seized the banners. She asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

“They’re just hurting, and these people come off sympathetic,” she said. “Who wouldn’t fall for it?”

Jimenez was fatally shot in the chest by a sheriff’s deputy early Saturday morning after someone threw a beer bottle at a patrol car. Sheriff’s officials allege that Jimenez provoked the shooting by assaulting one of the officers with a flashlight. Residents of the project, many of whom were celebrating a neighbor’s birthday that night, contend the shooting was unprovoked.

On Tuesday, a resident who videotaped a portion of the confrontation showed the 25-minute tape to several reporters and photographers. The tape begins about 1:45 a.m., shortly after Jimenez was shot, said Salvador Salas, who rushed outside with his camcorder.

In the video, about a dozen deputies appear to be trying to keep about 20 to 30 residents away from Jimenez’s body, which is lying on the lawn outside one of the units. One deputy pushes what seems to be a teen-age girl by the shoulders to keep her back and another youth--booked for interfering with a police officer--is handcuffed and dragged away.

But the scene is more one of confusion--full of shouts, sirens and flashing lights--than of a melee. Initial reports were that 300 residents had squared off with rocks and bottles against about 75 sheriff’s deputies and Los Angeles police officers.

“There’s more patrol cars than people out there,” said Salas, who will be arraigned Aug. 31 on charges that he punched a deputy who confiscated his tape. “I don’t know why they say there was 300 rioters.”

Salas, who had the tape returned to him when he was released from jail on Monday, said he sold copies of it for $150 each to four local TV stations.

A Sheriff’s Department spokesman said Tuesday officials never described the scene as a riot. Although they stand by reports that rocks and bottles were thrown by residents until nearly 4:30 a.m., deputies said the attacks were sporadic and did not involve all 300 residents estimated to be around the scene.

“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department agreed, after reviewing the video, that the residents, in general, were not riotous and that, with few exceptions, were cooperative with law enforcement,” Sgt. Ronald Spear said.

Residents have also expressed concern that paramedics were late in attending to Jimenez, who was pronounced dead at the scene. Paramedics appear to arrive by his body about 15 to 20 minutes after the videotape begins. Shortly before the tape ends, Jimenez is placed on a stretcher and wheeled away.

Recordings released Tuesday by the Los Angeles Fire Department of radio communications involving the shooting show that paramedics were delayed about five minutes outside the project by police officers and sheriff’s deputies before they could get to Jimenez.

“There are shots still being fired. They want us to stay back out of the area,” paramedics in one rescue ambulance radioed at 1:47 a.m., one minute after their arrival.

According to Assistant Chief Ed Allen, such delays are “normal, if the area is not secure.”

At 1:51 a.m., according to emergency reports, the two paramedics reached Jimenez. They pronounced him dead at 1:56 a.m.

About an hour later, the paramedic supervisor radioed superiors that, “We’ll be here indefinitely. Rescue 2 has a DB (dead body) in the back of their ambulance waiting for the coroner. Rescue 3 and Engine 16 are standing by on Indiana (Street). LAPD and sheriffs have an operation and they still have officers involved.

“So we’ll be standing by.”

Times staff writer Penelope McMillan contributed to this story.