Latino Activists Protest Fatal Police Shooting

About 40 Latino activists marched outside the West Valley Division police station Saturday protesting the fatal police shooting last spring of an unarmed auto detailer and what they described as widespread police abuses.

Members of the San Fernando Valley Committee for Justice for La Raza walked from Reseda Park to the LAPD station on Vanowen Street near Reseda Boulevard, then chanted for about an hour in a demonstration police described as peaceful.

“Our rule is to keep our actions militant but disciplined,” march organizer Agustin Cebada said.

The fledgling group, whose signs included depictions of the LAPD as Ku Klux Klan members, burned a small American flag to protest the March 9 shooting in Northridge of Jaime Jaurequi, a 23-year-old Reseda resident.

Jaurequi was killed in a hail of police gunfire during a search for a suspect in an assault with a deadly weapon call. Police said Jaurequi rammed a patrol car and attempted to run down several officers following a 40-minute chase. It was later determined that Jaurequi was not the suspect sought by authorities. Police said the shooting is still under investigation.

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Cebada said the group plans more actions.

“We feel we have to focus particular attention in the Valley because there is not that much organization out here to defend the rights of the people.”

Cebada credits the new group with at least one victory before the march began: the arrival earlier this month of a Latino, Capt. George Ibarra, as patrol commander of the West Valley station.

“We have been organizing this march for three to four weeks, and he was assigned to this station in the last two weeks,” Cebada said.

Police refuted the assertion.

“They had nothing to do with the fact that he’s here,” Sgt. Jeri Weinstein said. “There was an opening and he was next in line.”

Cebada said Ibarra met with marchers at the start of the protest and promised to meet soon with members of Jaurequi’s family, who also participated in the march.

Cebada said the group intends to press its grievances with the Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C.

“We are going to document all of the killings [by police] since the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994,” he said. “Since there is nothing being done by the district attorney, the U.S. attorney or the state attorney general, our people are defenseless.

“We will be contacting people from the Valley area who have been having problems with the LAPD.”