Officers fired non-lethal projectiles at protesters near Union Avenue and 6th, where Manuel Jamines was fatally shot Sunday afternoon by an officer who said Jamines refused commands to drop a switchblade.

About 9:30 p.m., police declared the protest an unlawful assembly and moved in to disperse the crowd as trash cans were set on fire and rocks and bottles were thrown at officers.

As police pushed crowds on 6th, some protesters climbed atop multistory apartment buildings, where they threw objects at officers below. Officers fired non-lethal projectiles toward the rooftops as residents peeked from their windows.

Several officers suffered minor injuries after being hit by bottles and rocks, police said. At least 22 people were arrested on charges such as failure to disperse, said LAPD Sgt. Alex Chogyoji.

At an evening news conference, Beck said the three bicycle patrol officers who confronted Jamines had about 40 seconds to act and did as good a job as could be done in such a quick-moving, emergency situation.

"There was very, very little opportunity to do much more than what was done," he said.

Beck identified the three officers involved as Frank Hernandez, a 13-year veteran; Steven Rodriguez, a five-year veteran; and Paris Pineda, who also has been on the force for five years.

Hernandez fired the shots, Beck said.

Police showed photographs of the bloodied knife — a switchblade that is about 6 inches long when opened — that they say Jamines, 37, was holding at the time of the shooting. Investigators are testing the blood to see whose it is, the LAPD said.

Beck said the area where the incident occurred "is not an easy place to police," in part because of its large immigrant population and widespread illegal vending.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was at the news conference, urged residents not to resort to violence. "We need to calm the waters," he said.

That message failed to resonate with protesters.

Police chase protesters on 6th Street, just west of downtown Los Angeles. The gathering was declared an unlawful assembly about 9:30 p.m. and police in riot gear moved in to begin dispersing the crowd.

Near 6th and Union late Tuesday, police fired at least two volleys of non-lethal projectiles. Demonstrators, including families with children, bolted down the street and into alleyways. Witnesses said a man fell off his bike and struck his head. Jesus Alejandro Hernandez Carmona, 20, was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from the left side of his head, near a candle-lit memorial to Jamines. He was surrounded by a crowd that was book-ended by police lined up along 6th at Union on the east and Burlington Avenue on the west. Los Angeles Fire Department ambulances were at the scene but were not crossing the police line. When asked by a reporter why the man was not receiving medical attention, a police commander said, "Tough." Carmona was eventually helped to the ambulance by friends and received treatment. Several people shouted angrily into loudspeakers and a group of young men wove through the crowd on bicycles. A vendor hawked bags of potato chips. Vitalina Rubio, 52 looked on with disappointment as protesters hurled the eggs.

"You can't fight violence with violence," said Rubio, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in the MacArthur Park area for nine years.

Several cars and pedestrians were trapped amid the mass of demonstrators. One man kept shouting in Spanish, "I only wanted KFC!"

Earlier in the day, Beck briefed the civilian Police Commission on the shooting, explaining that the one officer who fired his weapon did so in "immediate defense of life."

The chief's defense of the shooting came amid continuing protests from some Westlake area residents who complained that police routinely mistreat them. They say officers toss food from illegal vending carts and verbally harass them.

"We want someone — the mayor, a council member, anyone — to come here and say enough is enough," said resident Ana Lopez, 42. "The people want answers."

Beck stressed that the investigation into Jamines' death had just begun. But he promised it would be as transparent "as humanly possible."

The incident started Sunday afternoon when Rampart Division's bicycle unit responded to a call of a man threatening passersby with a knife.

The officers rode to the corner of 6th and Union , and found Jamines making threats. They confronted him with weapons drawn, repeatedly ordering him in English and Spanish to drop the knife, Beck said. But Jamines instead raised the knife over his head and came toward the officers, Beck said, at which point Hernandez fired two rounds.

Jamines was pronounced dead at the scene.

Sitting at the Guatemalan consulate's office on Tuesday, three of Jamines' cousins spoke somberly about his death. They described the father of three as a hard-working man who struggled with alcohol on the weekends. He came from a small town in Nahuala, Solola, where his body will soon be transferred by the consulate.

Isaias Jamines said Manuel had begun drinking about 9 a.m. on the day he died. He said he saw his cousin on 6th Street and asked him to quit drinking and go home. Moments later, when Isaias arrived at his apartment, he heard three gunshots.

"I couldn't believe it was my cousin," Isaias said.

"Why couldn't they have shot him in the leg or somewhere else instead of killing him? He was drunk, but he was never a violent person."

Juan Jamines, another cousin, asked the Westlake community to remain peaceful and cooperative.

"We don't want problems," Juan said. "We just want justice."

Pablo Alvarado, the director of the National Day Laborer Network, said he hoped that the shooting would help start a dialogue between day laborers and police.

"Violence like this should not separate us but should draw us together," he said.

Although some residents complained about the way police treated them, others — including many business owners — supported the efforts of the LAPD over the last several years to drive down drug dealing and other crime that was once much more rampant. The department earned wide praise for cleaning up MacArthur Park, and that continues to pay dividends for the community.

A town hall meeting will be held by the Police Department at John H. Liechty Middle School at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

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Los Angeles Police Protective League reaction to protest EDITOR'S NOTE: The LAPPL is the union that represents the rank-and-file officers of the Los Angeles Police Department. The mission of the Los Angeles Police Protective League is to vigilantly protect, promote, and improve the working conditions, legal rights, compensation and benefits of Los Angeles Police Officers. by LAPPL Board of Directors 09/07/2010 If an intoxicated man is reckless enough to threaten innocent people with a knife, causing one resident to flag down passing officers for help, it should come as no surprise that he may do something as irrational as turn on the uniformed bicycle officers with that knife in an attempt to kill them. Likewise, any person, whether or not they speak English, or who has had too much to drink, should understand that threatening officers with a knife will result in a swift and appropriate response by police, and if necessary, it will include the use of deadly force. It was precisely that combination of behavior on the part of Manuel Jamines on September 5 that precipitated his death. Various community “activists,” including the Revolutionary Communist Party, are attempting to gin this shooting up into a controversy, agitating a small handful of others to conduct “protests” of this shooting. The pathetic attempt to excuse the armed advance on the responding officers by claiming the man “did not speak English” only highlights the inanity of the “protest.” For the record, the officers gave him commands in English and Spanish, not that it matters because getting drunk and threatening bystanders and then LAPD officers with a knife is dangerous and self-destructive in any language. This was not and should not be a controversial shooting. Certainly this was a tragic incident and undoubtedly uncomfortable for people in the area to witness, but police work isn't pretty. Police officers don't get paid to get stabbed, nor do we possess magical powers or weapons that allow the seamless disarming of armed and dangerous individuals. When an individual, armed with a deadly weapon, makes a decision (however poor that decision is) to advance on police officers, then that individual is solely responsible for whatever the consequences may be. http://www.lapd.com/blog/

LAPD officers en route to a community meeting in Westlake on Wed night encounter mounds of trash in the street.

Protesters heckle LAPD chief at meeting in Westlake Police struggle to calm an angry crowd outside the meeting. Two days of protests and violent skirmishes had preceded Wednesday night's meeting over the police slaying Sunday of a day laborer. by Joel Rubin and Esmeralda Bermudez, Los Angeles Times September 9, 2010 After two days of protests and violent skirmishes, Los Angeles police officials struggled again Wednesday evening to calm anger in the wake of the fatal shooting of a knife-wielding man by an officer. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck was heckled and booed by many in the crowd of about 300 who attended a community meeting at John H. Liechty Middle School, a short walk from the scene of Sunday's shooting. "I hope we came here to have a discussion. Please let's respect each other," Beck told the unruly crowd. "Respect us! When are you going to respect us?" yelled some. Others shouted, "Killers! Assassins!"

Beck, forced by the noise to step away from the microphone, stopped talking briefly. "I promise you a fair investigation," he said when he returned after several minutes, reminding the crowd that he had close ties to the area, having once commanded the LAPD's Rampart Division.

The turmoil stems from the killing of Manuel Jamines, 37, a Guatemala-born day laborer, who was shot by a police officer Sunday afternoon on a busy Westlake street.

Jamines, authorities said, had been threatening passers-by with a knife, and when confronted by three officers, ignored their orders to drop the knife. Officer Frank Hernandez, a 13-year department veteran, fired two rounds when Jamines came at him with the knife raised over his head, officials have said.

As Wednesday's meeting was going on, scores of officers outside were preparing for the possibility of a repeat of Tuesday night, when a few hundred protesters rallied at the site of the shooting on 6th Street near Union Avenue. Some protesters threw rocks and bottles at officers, who responded by firing nonlethal foam projectiles. At least 22 people were arrested.

Near the meeting site Wednesday night, riot-clad police officers in patrol cars played a cat-and-mouse game with throngs of protesters along 6th Street.

A few hundred people gathered at Burlington Avenue and 6th in Westlake, where some hurled bottles at squad cars. Others shouted "Pig!" and profanities at officers as they got out of their vehicles, rifles in their hands.

At least one fire was lighted, but it was quickly extinguished. Authorities indicated that arrests had been made but had no firm numbers.

The vitriolic response to the shooting has surprised many department and elected officials. With the knife recovered at the scene, eyewitness accounts allegedly supporting the authorities' claim that Jamines advanced aggressively toward the officers, and no racial overtones to the shooting, the incident did not seem to be one that would cause such an eruption of anger.

In an interview Wednesday, Beck blamed the unrest on outside groups that, he said, seized on the killing as an opportunity to foment anger toward the police.

The area's large population of immigrant day laborers, who have struggled to find work during the city's financial collapse and have grown frustrated with the LAPD's aggressive stance against the neighborhood's ubiquitous illegal street vendors, may have been particularly receptive to the calls for upheaval, Beck said.

"It has been a bunch of agitators pushing the envelope and using individuals as their pawns," he said.

At least some of the disorder seemed to have been fueled by such groups. About a dozen people who appeared to be affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party handed out literature about the group's beliefs and other cases of officer-involved shootings, and chanted messages over bullhorns about a communist revolution. Among those arrested Tuesday night was Jubilee Shine, 40, of South Los Angeles, who heads a group called the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police.

Hernandez, the officer who shot Jamines, remains ineligible for patrol assignments, police officials said. An officer involved in a shooting is kept off the streets until the chief has received a formal briefing on the incident and the officer is cleared by a department psychologist to return to full duty.

Hernandez has been through the process before. In two previous incidents, he shot and wounded two people while on duty, according to LAPD officials and records.

Citing privacy laws, Beck declined to discuss the past shootings, or any details of Hernandez's personnel file. He voiced support for Hernandez, however, and indicated that the 39-year-old officer's performance should not come under suspicion because of the multiple shootings.

"If we had any concerns about his ability to use deadly force, he wouldn't be out in the field," Beck said in an interview. "Each of these [shootings] need to be looked at in their individual contexts."

In the previous shootings, Hernandez was found by LAPD officials and the agency's oversight board to have acted within the department's policies on the use of deadly force, according to LAPD sources who spoke on the condition that their names not be used because of privacy laws.

Hernandez first used his handgun in November 1999, his third year on the force. While assigned to the department's Southwest Division, Hernandez and his partner responded to a robbery call and tracked the female suspect into the backyard of a home, according to an account released at the time by the department.

The pair opened fire when the woman allegedly pointed a handgun at them, according to the account. She fell to the ground, but allegedly reached for her weapon and ignored Hernandez's orders to stop, causing him to shoot her again. A loaded semiautomatic handgun was recovered at the scene, according to the department's account. At the time, the woman was listed in stable condition.

Almost a decade later, in December 2008, Hernandez and a different partner were helping to search for assault suspects in the LAPD's Rampart Division. They approached an 18-year-old man they suspected of being involved in the assault, according to a department account of the incident released at the time. The man tried to flee, then pointed a gun at the officers, the account said. Hernandez shot the man once, wounding him.

Carol Sobel, a civil-rights attorney who has clashed with the LAPD over the use of force, echoed several protesters and residents in the area who questioned why Hernandez had not been able to shoot Jamines in the arm or leg.

"I can understand if the person has a gun, that the officer should shoot to kill. But, in this case, with a knife, it seems to me this could be excessive," she said.

Deputy Chief Sandy Jo MacArthur, who oversees training for the LAPD, said officers are put through simulation machines that mimic real-life scenarios in which the decision to use deadly force must be made in seconds.

Officers are not taught to "shoot to kill" or to "shoot to wound," she said, but are trained to aim always at an aggressor's "center mass" — roughly the belly or chest — to stop the person from advancing. If that does not stop the person, officers are trained to aim at the suspect's head, MacArthur said.

While police have not said where Jamines was struck, witnesses indicated that Hernandez shot him in the head. It is not known where Hernandez was aiming.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0909-lapd-shooting-20100909,0,1506244,print.story