Torres Joins Calls for Investigation of Sheriff’s Department : Hearing: State senator takes part in meeting with Ramona Gardens residents, who angrily complain of treatment by deputies.

As residents of the Ramona Gardens housing project vented their frustration Tuesday with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department during a legislative hearing into police conduct, state Sen. Art Torres joined the call for an independent examination of the department.

The hearing, held in the East Los Angeles housing project’s gymnasium to take testimony in the Aug. 3 fatal shooting of Ramona Gardens resident Arturo Jiminez by a deputy, turned into a forum for residents to air their outrage over a string of controversial shootings by deputies.

“This is not the only incident that the community has had in confronting the Sheriff’s Department,” said Father Juan Santillan, a priest of nearby St. Lucy’s Catholic Church. “It’s only because we are Latino that are we identified as being gang members.”

After nearly 3 1/2 hours of angry testimony, Torres (D-Los Angeles) said that he supports an independent investigation of the Sheriff’s Department. He also said he will also consider drafting legislation to overhaul the procedure citizens use to complain about misconduct by deputies. Torres said he wants the Sheriff’s Department to index each complaint so supervisors could identify deputies with a pattern of abuse.

The frequent target of Tuesday’s criticism, Sheriff Sherman Block, did not show up for the hearing despite urgings by Torres, chairman of the panel. Torres said he asked Block on Sunday to attend the hearing, but Block declined and refused to send a representative.

A spokesman for Block said the sheriff did not attend the meeting because he had already attended a lengthy hearing before the County Board of Supervisors on Sept. 10 and that “the Ramona Gardens incident was discussed at length at that hearing.”

But some residents said Block’s decision not to speak at Ramona Gardens indicates that he is not interested in ending the hostility between his department and the Latino community.

“It just shows that he is running from the truth,” said Art Pulido, chairman of an ad-hoc group of residents that was formed after the Jiminez shooting. “This is his department that we are talking about and he should be here to defend it.”

Santillan said he doubts whether Block wants to address the concerns of Latinos in the housing project. “If it was important to him he would be here,” Santillan said.

The priest appeared to speak for many among the 100 people who came to the gymnasium to call for an investigation by an independent panel similar to the Christopher Commission’s probe of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Elva Jiminez, mother of Arturo Jiminez, agreed with Santillan. “All I’m asking for is justice,” she said. “I don’t want another mother to suffer what I have suffered at the hands of the Sheriff’s Department.”

Jiminez was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy after someone threw a beer bottle at a patrol car. Sheriff’s officials allege that Jiminez provoked the shooting by beating a deputy with the deputy’s flashlight.

Christina Vargas, who said she was Arturo Jiminez’s girlfriend, testified that she saw no one attack the deputies before the shooting.

Several speakers also criticized the Sheriff’s Department over the Aug. 13 fatal shooting of a former mental patient in Ladera Heights. A coroner’s report found that the man, Keith Hamilton, was shot eight times in the back.

Torres said he was disappointed that Block did not attend, but he added that the hearing served the purpose of collecting testimony and suggestions on ways to improve police relations with minority communities.

Some of the most emotional testimony came from Soledad Belmontez, who said her 27-year-old son, Albert F. Belmontez, was shot 10 times by deputies in San Dimas more than two years ago.

During the hearing, she held up a prosthetic leg that her son wore and a handful of photographs, the only reminders she had left of him, she said.

“We don’t want what happened to us to happen to someone else,” she said.