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<\/a>Demonstrators rally outside the LA County Sheriff\u2019s Department in Compton to demand justice for Jose de la Trinidad. (Dan Bluemel \/ LA Activist)<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cHow am I supposed to explain to my daughters that their father was murdered by the police, the people they’re supposed to go to for protection,\u201d\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0Rosanna de la Trinidad\u00a0three days after her husband was killed.\u00a0Jose de la Trinidad, 36, left behind a wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 6 when he was shot dead by Los Angeles Sheriff\u2019s Deputies on November 10, 2012.<\/p>\n An\u00a0autopsy report<\/a>\u00a0obtained by the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0reveals that he was shot from behind. Five of the bullets pierced him in the upper and lower back, one in the right forearm, and another in his right hip. Four were described as fatal.<\/p>\n This makes the deputies who shot him look more guilty of execution-style murder than they already did.<\/p>\n Police say they opened fired because De la Trinidad was reaching for his waistband where he could have been keeping a gun. But this is contradicted by a witness who saw the whole thing. She says deputies opened fire on De la Trinidad after he followed their orders to turn around and put his hands above his head. The autopsy report confirms that he did in fact have his back turned to police when they killed him.<\/p>\n It all started when Jose and his older brother, Francisco, left his niece\u2019s\u00a0quincea\u00f1era.\u00a0<\/em>Police tried to pull them over for speeding, but Francisco, who was driving, refused to stop, prompting a brief car chase. A few blocks later, the car came to a sudden halt and Jose jumped out of the passengers seat. Francisco quickly took off again, forcing one deputy to drive after him. Meanwhile, Jose stood on the sidewalk where he was greeted by three deputies in the street with their guns drawn. That\u2019s when, police say, Jose reached for his waistband to retrieve what they could only assume was a gun (because, duh, he\u2019s brown!). ‘Fearing for their lives’, two of the deputies shot and killed him.<\/p>\n Little did they know that a nearby resident, who goes by the name Estefani, to protect her identity, witnessed the entire incident from her bedroom window directly above the shooting.<\/p>\n \u201cHis hands were on his head when they started shooting,\u201d she\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0investigators canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses some 30 minutes after the shooting.<\/p>\n Estefani said De la Trinidad did jump out of the car after it came to a sudden stop. After he ran toward the deputies a few feet, they ordered him to stop and turn around \u2014 which he did immediately, she said.<\/p>\n Seconds later, the deputies opened fire, she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But they didn\u2019t like what they were hearing:<\/p>\n The deputies, she said, repeatedly asked her which direction De la Trinidad was facing, which she perceived as an attempt to get her to change her story.<\/p>\n \u201cI told them, \u2018You\u2019re just trying to confuse me,\u2019 and then they stopped,\u201d she said. Authorities later interviewed Estefani a second time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In their\u00a0most recent report<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0the autopsy, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0failed to include a vital tidbit: the Sheriff\u2019s Department initially denied having spoken to any witnesses. It wasn\u2019t until they were questioned by, ironically enough, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0that\u00a0they came clean<\/a>, though they blamed it on \u201ca lack of information\u00a0flowing between various deputies and lieutenants involved in the investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n The family plans on suing the Sheriff\u2019s Department, according to their attorney, Arnoldo Casillas, who\u00a0argues<\/a>\u00a0that De la Trinidad\u00a0\u201dcomplied, did what he was supposed to, and was gunned down by trigger-happy deputies.\u201d<\/p>\n Over 100 people joined De la Trinidad\u2019s relatives in Compton on Saturday to demand justice. They marched through the streets chanting, \u201cNo justice, no peace! No killer police!\u201d, a rallying cry sung far too often in neighborhoods of color where police shootings are a regular occurrence. But you would never know this from the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0piece, which includes just two sentences about the weekend protest.<\/p>\n Luckily, the\u00a0LA Activist\u2019s\u00a0Dan Bluemel<\/a>\u00a0was there:<\/p>\n Converging on the Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department\u2019s Compton station, protesters demanded justice, not only for the Trinidad family, but for other victims of police shootings.<\/p>\n Speaking to demonstrators, Gigi Fahmi, a friend of De la Trinidad and his wife, described the victim as devoted to his spouse, Rosanna de la Trinidad, and his two daughters, ages three and six.<\/p>\n Fahmi demanded the deputies responsible for De la Trinidad\u2019s death face criminal charges.<\/p>\n \u201c[Sheriff] Lee Baca has no control over his department and should be ashamed of himself, as well as the department, for the way they handled, what deputy sheriffs called a \u2018routine traffic stop,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cYou tell me, what\u2019s so routine about two sheriffs instructing an unarmed man to \u2018stop, turn around, put your hands on your head,\u2019 so sheriffs can then proceed to shoot him execution style, riddling his body with seven bullets?\u201d<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n Damian Ramirez delivered a personal message to the sheriffs. He was a close friend of\u00a0Michael Nida II, who was killed by Downey Police in October of 2011<\/a><\/strong>. Like De la Trinidad, Nida was unarmed and gunned down in the back.<\/p>\n \u201cNo more murders of innocent men because you don\u2019t know how to do your job, because you are afraid of the community you serve,\u201d<\/strong> said Ramirez to the deputy sheriffs. \u201cThe time has come to change the way you do business, the way you are trained to police these communities. These are human beings you are stealing from their families, human beings who deserve to live the rest of their lives in peace and freedom.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n According to the\u00a0Times<\/em>, there have been at least\u00a0238 police killings<\/a>\u00a0in Los Angeles County since 2007, which\u00a0Bluemel\u00a0highlights<\/a>\u00a0at the LA Activist, adding:<\/p>\n Jubilee Shine, an organizer for the LA Coalition for Community Control Over the Police, referred to the officer-involved shootings as a \u201clong pattern and practice of abuse of poor, black and brown and working-class people.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Since 1983, he said, only one California police officer has been jailed for killing a civilian while on duty. That was\u00a0Johannes Mehserle, a former transit cop who killed Oscar Grant<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0while Grant was lying face down and pinned by another officer. Grant was unarmed. Mehserle said he had mistaken his sidearm for his Taser when he shot Grant in the back.<\/p>\n Shine, who called attention to the diverse racial makeup of the crowd, told the demonstrators they had a \u201ccommon enemy and a common purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese police and these deputy sheriffs, they do not come from these neighborhoods,\u201d he said. \u201cThey do not come from Compton, Watts or Inglewood. They bring these cops and deputy sheriffs in from out of town \u2014 from Anaheim, Pasadena and the Westside. They give them good salaries to come and act like armies in our streets.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n People on the left often worry about extrajudicial killings abroad, as they should. But do they realize that in certain US neighborhoods, state-sanctioned murder is routine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Rania Khalek on January 28, 2013 Dispatches From The Underclass \u201cHow am I supposed to explain to my daughters that their father was murdered by the police, the people they’re supposed to go to for protection,\u201d\u00a0asked\u00a0Rosanna de la Trinidad\u00a0three … Continue reading