Demonstration against LAPD shooting draws a broad spectrum of protesters

Some wore bandanas over their faces, while others wore the hammer and sickle on their shirts. They shouted “assassins” through bullhorns and passed out political pamphlets.

But among the roughly 200 demonstrators who descended on Westlake on Saturday to protest the fatal Sept. 5 police shooting of Guatemalan immigrant Manuel Jamines were many area residents, day laborers, construction workers and street vendors who said they came for more personal reasons.

“I came to support a friend, because I thought he should have justice,” said Juan Lorenzo Lopez, 41, a fellow Guatemalan immigrant. Lopez spoke while standing on the corner of 6th Street and Union Avenue, a few feet away from where Jamines fell.

After Jamines’ shooting, the Los Angeles Police Department faced two days of protests and violent skirmishes, with eggs and other projectiles thrown at officers. Saturday’s demonstration, on the other hand, was a loud but peaceful affair.

Participants marched from the shooting site to the LAPD’s Rampart station and then to MacArthur Park, while a smaller group broke off and protested in front of LAPD headquarters downtown.

Protesters passed street vendors selling sizzling bacon-wrapped dogs and street evangelists promising salvation. Although the Westlake neighborhood is overwhelmingly Latino, with some Asian residents, many of the activists who showed up were white or black. Many wore their views on their clothing.

Rudy Pisani, an 80-year-old Korean War veteran, wore a cap sporting the image of revolutionary Che Guevara and a shirt that read, “For a Socialist America.” One woman wore a shirt claiming that “Racist capitalism killed Manuel Jamines.”

Authorities said that Jamines, 37, was drunk and threatening people with a knife when confronted by three officers. Officer Frank Hernandez, a 13-year LAPD veteran, fired two rounds when Jamines came at him with the knife raised over his head, officials have said. But some residents contended that although Jamines was intoxicated, he did not have a knife.

While the shooting remains under investigation, some protesters have called for Hernandez’s arrest. Two years ago, the officer was criticized but not sanctioned by the LAPD’s watchdog arm after shooting an 18-year-old man in the leg.

Ron Gochez, 29, a member of Union del Barrio, a community organization, said the LAPD was quick to label anyone demonstrating against their actions communists and “outside agitators.” They were wrong, he said.

Unlike more settled Latino neighborhoods on the city’s Eastside, many of the immigrants in the Westlake area come from Central American countries scarred by civil war and oppression, Gochez said.

“People here are more combative than they are in a place like Boyle Heights, where you have a lot of people who are second, third generation,” he said. Westlake’s immigrants are recent arrivals who “literally escaped oppression.”

Sitting on the stoop of his apartment on Union Avenue, Jose Alberto Vasquez, a 42-year-old Guatemalan construction worker, said he heard the shooting as it happened two weeks ago but chose to sit out the demonstration.

“I really don’t have anything to say about the cops. I never give them a reason to mess with me,” Vasquez said. “I’d like to see the cops be more aggressive and come down hard on the gangs though. At night, you’re afraid to come out.”

While ambivalent about the police version of the shooting, he said the tenor of the earlier rallies deterred him from getting involved.

“I saw how in the previous events some people were throwing eggs and all sorts of other stuff. That wasn’t right,” Vasquez said. “The way I see it, I’m a guest in this country. Doing stuff like that is just an insult to the law. I have a family to support. The last thing I need is to get deported.”

hector.becerra@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com