CITY COUNCIL ELECTION / 1ST DISTRICT : Jimenez Death Shifts Focus of Campaign

For the two City Council candidates on Tuesday’s ballot in the heavily Latino 1st District, the Ramona Gardens episode is the latest twist to a campaign dominated by talk of crime and how best to fight it.

Mike Hernandez and Sharon Mee Yung Lowe said the Aug. 3 shooting of a 19-year-old Latino by a sheriff’s deputy at the housing project has captured the attention of Latinos the same way that the Rodney G. King incident mobilized public sentiment among blacks.

“I’ve been talking about crime this whole campaign,” Hernandez said, “but Ramona Gardens was all people were talking about at a menudo fund-raiser last week.”

Lowe said: “Even though it happened in the 14th District, and this is the 1st District, it doesn’t matter. People are talking about it. Someone from the county Democratic (Party) Committee called me to talk about it.”

Hernandez, 38, a bond agent from Cypress Park, and Lowe, 36, a Chinatown attorney, are facing each other in a runoff to fill the vacancy created when Gloria Molina in February defeated state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) for a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Hernandez, with the backing of Molina and most other Latino officeholders, finished first in the June 4 primary with 42% of the vote. Lowe was second with 21%. Tuesday’s winner will serve the last two years of Molina’s term.

Until recently, Hernandez and Lowe mostly talked about how to improve police protection in a district that has some of the worst crime areas in Los Angeles--the largely immigrant neighborhoods in Pico-Union and around MacArthur Park.

High unemployment and poverty in the district have exacerbated crime problems there, the candidates said. According to recent census figures, a household’s average income in the 1st District is $19,739; the citywide average is $32,832.

Hernandez and Lowe--who not only want more police officers but demand that they be courteous and sensitive to the district--recently have been forced by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California to respond to questions about whether they supported the ouster of Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and the major recommendations of the Christopher Commission.

The two, who said they agreed with the ACLU’s criticisms of Gates, now are hearing concerns raised in Latino neighborhoods as a result of the shooting of Arturo Jimenez by a sheriff’s deputy at Ramona Gardens.

Seeking to represent a district in which nearly 74% of the 233,000 residents are Latinos, Hernandez and Lowe in separate interviews were critical of how the Sheriff’s Department handled the situation.

Two sheriff’s deputies said they were pursuing a speeding motorist early Aug. 3 when they entered the Ramona Gardens housing project in Lincoln Heights.

There, they said, a beer bottle was thrown at them, and when they stopped to investigate, Jimenez grabbed a deputy’s flashlight and knocked out him unconscious. Authorities said the other deputy then shot Jimenez.

That sparked a confrontation between residents and about 75 sheriff’s deputies and Los Angeles Police Department officers.

“What was the Sheriff’s Department doing there in the first place?” Hernandez asked during an interview.

Acknowledging that the sheriff’s deputies frequently enter city territory when in pursuit of criminals, Hernandez nevertheless questioned whether they acted properly once the beer bottle was thrown at them.

“They’re chasing someone down (in a hot pursuit) and someone throws a bottle and they (deputies) all get out of the cars,” said Hernandez. “That’s pretty drastic action. I think it’s time to start the same process (like the Christopher Commission) to look out at the Sheriff’s Department.”

Lowe was equally critical of the Sheriff’s Department.

“This is analogously close to the Rodney King situation,” said Lowe, referring to the March 3 incident in which California Highway Patrol officers chased King on a freeway and later turned over jurisdiction to Los Angeles police once the motorist was stopped.

“There are definitely questions about police rules and policies when a police force enters another’s jurisdiction. (The shooting) happens all too frequently in the Asian-Pacific, African-American and Latino neighborhoods.”

A spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, Sgt. Bob Stoneman, rejected the criticism, saying that the deputies had every right to be at Ramona Gardens that night because they were in pursuit of a speeding motorist.

The spokesman added that there is nothing in the aftermath of the incident to suggest that the department would undergo a Christopher Commission-type review, referring a reporter to earlier statements made by Sheriff Sherman Block in which he said the commission’s report was being closely scrutinized by the top brass.

“I--and my staff--would be foolish not to view the report very careful,” Block said in an interview with The Times last month.