When the Los Angeles Police Department faced hundreds of protesters on the streets of the Westlake District, some were people drawn to the event from other parts of the city for political reasons.
Twenty-two people were arrested Tuesday night after protesters clashed with police near a vigil for Manuel Jamines, a Guatamalan-born day laborer fatally shot Sunday by an officer who said Jamines refused to drop a knife.
Among those arrested was Jubilee Shine, 40, a South Los Angeles activist who heads the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police. Shine said he was arrested on 6th Street near Bonnie Brae Street just before 10 p.m.
He said he arrived in the area about 9:30 p.m. and was walking toward a crowd of demonstrators at the corner of 6th Street and Burlington Avenue when the crowd bolted toward him.
“People just started to split,” Shine said.
He said he turned to run but was ordered to the ground and handcuffed. Police have not released the names of those arrested, but Shine said the protesters with whom he shared a jail cell Tuesday night were all Central American or Mexican immigrants who live in and around Westlake.
“From what I could tell, everyone there was local from that neighborhood,” he said.
Some of the earlier unrest appeared to have been fueled by political activists from other parts of the city. About a dozen people who appeared to be affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party handed out literature about its beliefs and other cases of officer-involved shootings, and chanted messages over bullhorns about a communist revolution.
[Corrected at 9:30 p.m.: A previous version of this post incorrectly referred to the Revolutionary Community Party.]