The week that murdered high school football star Jamiel Shaw was buried, Los Angeles community activist Najee Ali, of Project Islamic Hope, was criticized by LAPD Chief Bill Bratton for suggesting that the shooting, allegedly by 19-year-old Pedro Espinoza, was racially motivated.

That same mid-March week, LA reporter Annette Stark took heat for pushing the racial aspect to the murder in her stories for LA Citybeat.

Najee and Stark weren’t alone in their ideas. The notion that the handsome, high-achieving young man—-who was being recruited by Stanford and other universities, and had a mother serving in Iraq—-was blown away in a random race-based murder, inflamed much of LA’s African American community. Los Angeles Wave contributing writer, Betty Pleasant, had furious exchanges with Bill Bratton, both in person and in print, about whether of not the murder was racial.

Jamiel’s distraught father, Jamiel Shaw Sr., pushed successfully for the dismissal of the first prosecutor on the case, Michele Hanisee, because she declined to file the murder as a hate crime after the grief stricken Shaws tried to insist upon it.

Now, at least two of the people who researched more deeply into the circumstances surrounding the murder—Project Hope’s Ali and reporter Stark—have reversed their original views that Jamiel Shaw was killed for racial reasons. They are joined in this perspective by gang expert, Alex Alonso, who first broke that part of the story last week.

Both Ali and Stark now believe that Jamiel Shaw’s murder was purely gang related, that he was shot because the shooter believed him to be a member of the Rollin 20’s NHB (Neighborhood Bloods), a Blood set that was very much at odds with 18th Street, the gang of which the suspected shooter was reputedly a member.

Stark has an extensively reported story on the subject coming out in the LA Weekly a week from this Thursday in which she writes about what she now believes is Shaw’s gang affiliation, as demonstrated in multiple areas on MySpace. (The story was bounced by LA Citybeat, and snatched up by the Weekly.)

Najee Ali has been similarly persuaded that Shaw-–whether out of youthful confusion and foolishness, or something more—was being dangerously provocative with gang references by him and his friends on his MySpace page(s).

(These are samplings…click to enlarge)

With this in mind, Ali held a press conference yesterday morning and, together with a “coalition of community leaders, “called for MySpace and Facebook to “aggressively monitor and remove profiles that promote and glorify gang violence.”

Jamiel Shaw the 17-year-old L.A.High football star who was gunned down on March 2 by an alleged gang member was a frequent MySpace user. On his profiles he claimed membership in his neighborhood street gang and posed for pictures flashing gang signs. Shaw also threatened violence on his MySpace pages against rival gangs causing many people to now believe that Shaw was gunned down not because of his race but because of his gang…associations that were promoted by MySpace. announcing their intention to request that FaceBook and MySpace ban any and all gang references…”

I spoke to Najee Ali several times yesterday, and he told me that he feels guilty about being one of the first who publicly rushed to judgment about the racial nature of the tragic killing.

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Iraqi interpreter masking identity, photo by Ann Scott Tyson


When the first phase of the war in Iraq was over, and the occupation began, the United States turned to Iraqis for myriad forms of help. We needed people as translators, teachers and to fill various other staff positions. Thousands upon thousands of Iraqis stepped forward to offer their services.

In the last few years, those same Iraqis have been targeted for death, their family members threatened. Many have already been killed. Most have fled the country and are temporarily as refugees in countries like Jordan and Syria. They have applied to come to the U.S.

But the US, who was eager to use their services, is far less eager to help them in return, according to last night’s 60 Minutes story titled The List.

Here’s some of the text of the opening:

The refugee crisis in Iraq is among the biggest humanitarian emergencies in the world. Millions of Iraqis have fled the war, many marked for death because they worked for the United States. They were translators, office workers, many other things, but now the enemy has branded them as collaborators.

When that happened in Vietnam, the U.S. brought more than 100,000 refugees to the states. But today, the U.S. government, which was so desperate for Iraqi workers, is not so eager to help them now.

….One young American named Kirk Johnson has jumped into this breach. All he wanted to do was rescue one of his Iraqi co-workers. When he did, a thousand more pleaded for help and Johnson began “the list.”

“The people on my list have been tortured, they’ve been raped, they’ve lost body limbs. There’s one guy on my list who’s been thrown out of a moving vehicle. And all of this because they helped us. They came every single day to try to pitch in, in our efforts there,” Johnson tells [Scott] Pelley.

Johnson says we owe these Iraqis “speedy resettlement” in the United States.

The U.S. failed to grant that speedy resettlement. So Johnson has taken it upon himself to plead the cases of some of an estimated 100,000 Iraqis who worked for America.

So far, Johnson has been able to help 86 of the refugees. That leaves only about 99,914 to go.

For more details, check out The List Project.

A year ago, a lot was written on this issue, like this from CNN, and here’s an Op Ed by Johnson written last year for the New York Times. And, George Packer reported on the issue a in 2007 for the New Yorker.

A year later, little has changed.

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Thursday, New York Times Bureau Chief Jennifer Steinhauer, wrote a good round up of the emotional/cultural/legal winds that still swirl around the murder of Jamiel Shaw.

(Your faithful blogger is one of those quoted.)

Here’s how it opens:

Jamiel Shaw Sr. never gave much thought to the immigration status of gang members in his South Los Angeles neighborhood. With his military wife deployed to Iraq and two sons to raise, there were football practices to manage, shoes to buy, college applications to consider.

But in the two months since his older son, Jamiel Jr., was gunned down by a man the police say is a gang member who was here illegally from Mexico, Mr. Shaw has been able to think of little else.

“I don’t care about illegal people who are working here and taking care of themselves,” Mr. Shaw said. “I just feel I am obligated to target illegal aliens in gangs.”

A preliminary hearing in the killing of Jamiel Shaw Jr. is set to begin here on Thursday. Jamiel Jr. — who was black and, according to the police, not known to be affiliated with gangs — and a simmering unease about illegal immigration have unleashed a swell of opposition to the city’s hands-off policy toward immigration enforcement.

The Los Angeles Police Department was one of the first in the nation — nearly three decades ago — to institute a procedure that prohibits officers from initiating contact with people for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status. The procedure, known as Special Order 40, was designed in part to reassure illegal immigrants who historically had shied from reporting crimes and assisting police investigations.

But in the context of contemporary immigration politics, the procedure is now perceived in black neighborhoods and beyond as a roadblock to using immigration laws as a tool against Latino gang violence. A push to reverse the procedure, led by Mr. Shaw and viewed by many as a symbol of deeper racial conflicts in South Los Angeles, has inflamed tensions between many blacks and Hispanic immigrants, groups long resentful of each other as shifting demographics and a smattering of racially motivated killings have racked South Los Angeles.

“I think you can assume the resentments are pretty widespread,” said Connie Rice, a civil rights activist and lawyer. “There has been a huge turnover in a 20-year period, and so the tensions get expressed in a lot of other ways. The African-American community is feeling under siege, and it is always easier to strike out at the ‘other.’ “

[snip]

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I’m working on a deadline but will have more posting later today…. In the meantime:

Last year on May Day, in MacArthur Park, police used their batons to whack immigrant parents with their kids, plus small NPR reporters and various camera people (with their cameras rolling)—resulting in more than 300 excessive force complaints.

Among this year’s most to-the-point glimpse of what went wrong last year is this report by KPCC’s Frank Stolz talking to Juan Calos Baustista who says he had his leg broken by police at last year’s rally when he was shielding his four year old son.

But a year later, many changes have been made—-both in terms of departmental training, and on the LAPD’s command staff (the replacement of then Central Bureau head, Deputy Chief Caylor Carter, with well-liked Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz, among the most prominent changes).

Whether or not the training and the departmental changes had anything causal to do with it, this year’s May Day was festive and pretty much problem free. Of the photos I’ve seen from the day’s marches and rallies, one of those I like best the photo above of Deputy Chief Michael Hillman, by LA Times photographer Rick Loomis. Hillman is a cop’s cop, beloved by the rank and file as the guy they’d be most likely to follow into hell if the situation demanded it.

Fortunately yesterday’s May Day activities required no such thing.

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If my schedule will cooperate, I’m going to try to sort through the various views of Special Order 40 and where LA ought to go with it from here. This includes the points of view of LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, City Councilman Dennis Zine and his proposal to amend SO40, the proposal contained in Jamiel’s Law (which is just a little different than what Zine is suggesting), the view taken by the Police Protective League, which in general supports Zine’s proposal.

In the meantime, take a look at this opinion piece in Sunday’s LA Times in which researcher Monica Varsanyi tells what 450 police chiefs across the country said when asked how they feel about cops doing immigration enforcement.

And be sure to read the compilation in this morning’s LA Times Opinion in which 40 “prominent Angelenos”—chosen from one end of the political spectrum to the other—sound off on Special Order 40.

UPDATE: I missed linking to Rick Orlov’s column on the issue, which is at least fun to read, while advancing the dialog

Here’s pieces of his Bratton quote:

(ABOUT ZINE & HIS MOTION)

“He has not had a conversation with anyone, including my leadership team. He talks so much about being a reserve officer, he should go to his commanding officer for clarification.”

(ABOUT SO 40 IN GENERAL)

“I don’t understand what’s so difficult. We don’t ask people their immigration status if they are not breaking the law. Once they are arrested, we check to make sure they are in the country legally.”

“Our priority is going after gangbangers,” Bratton said. “Once they are arrested, we check their immigration status and if they are in the country illegally, turn it over to ICE.”

I love when Bratton gets on his high horse. (I’m not being ironic here. I actually do.)

And here’s Councilman Dennis Zine:

“This chief doesn’t think anything needs to be changed,” Zine said. “Ask any 10 officers on the street and they will tell you they don’t know what to do with Special Order 40. They feel they can’t do anything.”

Which suggests that Bill Bratton’s right; it’s not a legal issue, it’s a training issue. The problem isn’t with Special Order 40, it’s with the rank and file’s knowledge of it—-meaning the training and oversight on the matter is faulty.

But….although I’ve taken a POV on the issue before, I’m willing to concede that its a complex matter with various valid perspectives to consider. So I’ll continue to gather puzzle pieces for further discussion.

PS: I’ve put in a call to the LAPPL for clarification of their stand. Back with more on that tomorrow or the next day.

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We’ve now seen more than a week’s worth of politically charged emotional fiction pouring from sources ranging from KFI AM radio screamers John and Ken, to author Earl Ofari Hutchinson in yesterday’s LA Times op ed, to a new online column by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic Monthly. All contain the message that murdered football star Jamiel Shaw would likely not have died were it not for the restrictions of Special Order 40—the 1979 police mandate adopted by then LAPD Chief Darryl Gates that prevents officers from questioning people solely to determine their immigration status or arresting them solely for violations of immigration law.

Here’s how those master’s of veracity John and Ken put it:

If Special Order 40 didn’t stand in the way, the illegal would have been deported, and Jamiel would be alive. It’s as simple as that. We say that Mayor Villar, Chief Bratton and the City Council have blood on their hands!

But let’s review the facts, shall we?
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This is how it always happens. There is a high profile killing of a kid whose death breaks our hearts and we put pressure on lawmakers to Do Something to ease our collective pain and rage. In reaction to this pressure, bad laws are passed and loathsome state initiatives are voted into being.

The death of Polly Klass produced California’s Three Strikes law The cocaine-triggered death of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias produced the mandatory mimimums and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, and resulted in the filling of our prisons.

And now we have the searing heartbreak of the death of high school football star Jamiel Shaw–which has stimulated as a brand new push to make his death feel less horrible, less pointless, less painful……by taking a giant, irrational chunk out of Special Order 40.

It seems that the gang member who allegedly killed Jamiel was a 19-year undocumented Central American who had been brought to the US as a toddler, joined the 18th Street gang as an adolescent, then got himself locked up a weapons charge. When the time came fror his release, the LA Country jail officials, rather than turning him over to the Feds for deportation as Federal law demands, they simply let him let him out—no immigration checks, no nothing.

Now Jamiel’s family, wants the City Council to pass as a “modification” of Special Order 40 that would allow police to question anyone who is a gang member and then to turn them over to INS.

Today, council member Dennis Zine, who usually is a bit more sensible than most, will introduce this badly thought out motion to the city council.

So lets see….how exactly would this work? If the cops run into a 15 year old wanabee who has committed no crime but whom an officer or two thinks might be a gang member do they get to turn them over to INS? Will they turn over their mothers, dads, and younger sisters too, or just the 15 year old?

And who gets to decide who is a gang member? Will we use Cal Gang as our arbiter—nevermind that the gang database that is known for its howling inaccuracies?

We have a federal law on the books that, had it been enforced, would have resulted in the deportation of the screwed up young man who took Jamiel Shaw’s life away. We don’t need poorly conceived amendments that will usher in a host of unintended consequences (as poorly conceived out laws and the like always do).

But, hey, why be logical?

Of course, what we really need is comprehensive gang prevention and intervention programs. (Not to harp on this issue.)

Maybe if we tried harder with prevention and intervention we could have saved both Jamiel Shaw and his killer.

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What with the fire and other distractions, I’m late in talking about this. But it’s been bothering me for the past few days, so I’m going to bring it up now:

Americans are not thinking clearly on immigration. If they were, they would have urged their representatives to pass The Dream Act, which instead failed to get the needed 60 votes in the Senate this past Tuesday.

The Dream Act, if you’ll remember, is the bill that, if it had passed would have given certain students brought here illegally as children an opportunity at citizenship—if they go to college or into the military. As the Dallas Star-Telegram reported it, “Roberto Gonzales, a researcher with the University of California, Irvine, estimates that the DREAM Act “would provide 360,000 undocumented high school graduates with a legal means to work, and could provide incentives for another 715,000 youngsters between the ages of 5 and 17 to finish high school and pursue post-secondary education.”

Opponents claimed, with nothing resembling proof to back them up, that the plan would provide amnesty for parents and adult siblings and would be rife with fraud. Contras also blasted it as a “reward” for illegality, and a way that undocumented immigrants could “cut in line ahead of law abiding immigrants”…blah, blah, blah.

So instead of giving the approximately 1 million, seventy-five thousand kids an opportunity to better themselves, become tax-payers, serve in the army and, in general, make the country fiscally and sociologically healthier, we keep them at the fringes. How clever of us!

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My longtime close friend, writer John Leone, lives in the city of Del Mar, near San Diego. Tuesday morning, he wrote the following essay and sent it out to a list of friends, myself among them:

THE DAY OF THE DEVILS

John Leone

Rancho Santa Fe
Del Mar
Oct 23, 2007

45 houses burnt to the ground in Rancho Santa Fe, California’s most exclusive suburb, last night and this morning. The rich inhabitants escaped yesterday after a mandatory evacuation order.

My maids Ana Maria and Ana Luisa, who occupy servants’ quarters in Rancho Santa Fe, spent the night with three of their children in my guest bedrooms and downstairs. Their husbands had returned to Mexico to attend to extensive fire damage in Baja California.

California Highway Patrolmen came across an encampment of indocumentados running from the flames in McGonnigle Canyon, crossing an unfinished segment of CA Highway 56, according to radio reports. The group were camping in the billowing smoke on an unopened stretch of the highway. The Mexican workers told the CHP that they had become separated from a group three times their size, who were trying to simultaneously escape the conflagration and avoid detection. They had no idea what had happened to their compas. “It’s the Day of the Devils,” said one man in Spanish.

The biggest and most destructive of all the fires, the Witch Creek fire, after burning 600 homes in Rancho Bernardo, has ramped like a flaming caterpillar into this most exclusive area and is burning down the Del Dios Highway towards Via de la Valle and Del Mar, where some 5000 people spent the night under mandatory evacuation orders at the Del Mar Race Track.

My friend Bill Brooks’ 86-year-old mother was told by police to leave her Del Mar home and dutifully reported to the race track. She spent the night in the ash and respiratory danger zone instead of comfortably at home. But she has a very nice place to return to, which the nursing home and hospital patients, evacuated by the thousands, do not. Many sat out all night in the open under the smoke.

The works of man are resisted everywhere by Nature, and most of the destruction until now has taken place in new developments, in suburban cul-de-sacs, once chaparral which used to have natural yearly burn-offs. It is the equivalent of building in hurricane zones.

The flames continue to consume the lavish homes of the extremely rich and flush out the extremely poor who serve them from the ravines and arroyos in which they hide from la migra. “The flames are climbing over the ridges,” says a woman in Elfin Forest, an Encinitas suburb abutting Rancho. “We can see them on three sides. The poor Mexicans are walking along the roads. It’s like a war scene.”

The ashen air makes breathing difficult. The firestorm has a peculiar inevitability as it marches towards the west and the coastline, devouring fantastically expensive real estate, making the unthinkable come true. This has never happened before, not in the history of the state. Natives say it’s because of development, the cause of most ailments in the state. The average cost of the homes destroyed in Rancho Bernardo is over a million dollars,
and in Rancho Santa Fe many times that.

The malevolence of the fire makes one imagine purposeful violence against these places, and the helpless refugees evoke imagery familiar to all from war documentaries, but they’re not being shown on television, because these poor souls are not movie mavens or big shots or anything except desperate human beings with nowhere to go, fearful of the authorities who are helping the rich all around them.

FIRE UPDATE #1:

For those of you following Rebel Girl’s Santiago Fire evacuation saga, as of 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, she reports that, according to a neighbor who managed to get back in to Modjeska Canyon, her house is still standing, and the sprinklers she and her huz managed to get up on the structure’s roof, are still up there and sprinkling away.

Photo of the burning mountainside in Rancho Bernardo by Genero Molina/LA Times

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Here’s a passel of updates while I work on work on another deadline. Included is the latest on the Dream Act, creepy quotes from the Jena District Attorney, and more.
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THE DREAM ACT DIES (TEMPORARILY AT LEAST)

On Wednesday, Dick Durbin faced the fact that he was not able to get enough Republican support to keep the Dream Act alive as an amendment to the Defense authorization bill, and so Harry Reid told him to spike it. Then, on the Senate floor, Reid professed undying love for the Dream Act and said he’d “move the measure forward by Nov. 16.”

Mary Ann Zehr of Education Week, has good info on a few of the nuances of the bill including this:

While for years the DREAM Act contained a provision clarifying that states could provide in-state college tuition rates for undocumented students who were eligible to benefit from the act, that provision was dropped in the version of the act filed in the U.S. Senate last week

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JENA: THE GOOD NEWS AND THE REALLY CREEPY QUOTE

The good news out of Jena yesterday was that Mychal Bell’s, the main kid of the so-called Jena six, was released on $45,000 bail, after the DA on the case announced that he won’t fight the recent appellate court ruling demanding that Bell’s case be transferred to juvenile court.

The fact that District Attorney Reed Walters won’t push for adult charges means that Bell, who had faced a maximum of 15 years in prison on his aggravated second-degree battery conviction last month, instead can only be held in juvenile lock-up until he turns 21 if he is convicted in juvenile court.

The creepy quote came earlier in the week when the ever-chatty DA Walters had a lot more to say about various Jena-related issues, according to the Chicago Tribune:

Meanwhile, the Louisiana district attorney whose prosecution of the Jena 6 defendants sparked the civil rights protest declared that only through the intervention of Jesus Christ was Jena spared from a “disaster” last week when more than 20,000 African American demonstrators marched peacefully through the town.

“I firmly believe that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened,” LaSalle Parish District Atty. Reed Walters told a nationally televised press conference.

Okie dokie, Reed, honey. We surely are grateful that Jesus saw fit to keep those rowdy dark-skinned people in line.

Good gravy.

For the rest click here
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