L.A. officials try to calm community after cop shooting
L.A. officials try to calm community after cop shooting
By William M. Welch, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — After three nights of protests, Los Angeles police and city officials are struggling to calm community anger over the fatal shooting of a knife-wielding man by a police officer.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday that officers involved in the shooting Sunday night were heroes who "acted with bravery."
He said it was "outrageous" that residents called Police Chief Charlie Beck a murderer during a tense community meeting Wednesday night where 300 people packed into a school. The school is a short distance from the site of the shooting.
The death of Manuel Jamines, 37, a Guatemalan-born man working as a day laborer, has triggered protests in a city where the police department has long struggled to gain trust in poor and immigrant communities, and where use of force by police has been a flashpoint for decades.
MORE: L.A. police chief booed at community meeting
In protests this week, crowds threw eggs, rocks and bottles at police officers and set trash fires.
Authorities have said three bicycle officers were flagged Sunday by people concerned about a man with a knife.
The officers approached the man and told him to put the knife down. Instead, Jamines lunged at Officer Frank Hernandez, said Capt. Kris Pitcher, who heads the police department's force investigation division.
Hernandez shot Jamines twice in the head. Several witnesses later told police Jamines had been drinking.
Salvador Sanabria, executive director of community group El Rescate, said the community "reacted this way because they thought there was another way to deal with a drunk guy."
Beck voiced support for Hernandez following the shooting.
Joe Domanick, author of a book on the Los Angeles police, said Beck has wide support as a reformer chief. But he said Beck may have spoken too soon in support of the officer, "with the history the LAPD has had with these kinds of shootings."
David Klinger, a former L.A. officer and now on the criminology faculty at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis, said officers confronting a man with a knife face a lethal threat and their response may well have been justified.
"Based on how it's been described to me, it makes sense that deadly force would be appropriate," he said.
The community's reaction, Klinger said, reflects deeper tensions.
Los Angeles faced widespread riots in 1992 following the acquittal of four white officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, a black motorist. And in 2007, police clashed with immigration rights marchers.
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