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Phillips:
This Crazy Mixed Up World
LA
Prosecutor Taken Off Case of Slain Football Star
Shaw family
wants to repeal law preventing police inquiring about suspects’ immigration
status
By
Thomas Watkins
LOS
ANGELES – The community solidarity that followed the killing
of high school football star Jamiel Shaw Jr. did not last.
A prosecutor has been pulled from the case after clashing with Shaw's
parents, who are demanding hate-crime charges against the suspect,
believed to belong to a violent Latino gang. And the family is fighting
suggestions that an affinity for a rival gang was what led to Shaw's
slaying March 2.
At the heart of the friction is the polarizing issue of race in a city
known for its diversity of cultures. Shaw, 17, was black; prosecutors
say the man charged with killing him, Pedro Espinoza, is in the country
illegally.
Shaw's family is fighting for passage of “Jamiel's Law,” which
would overturn a long-standing rule preventing police from inquiring
about suspects' immigration status. It has not been welcomed in all
corners; opponents say it could deter illegal immigrants from reporting
crimes.
The topic was widely discussed at the city of Compton’s most
recent Anti-Crime Committee meeting, which the Shaws attended in hopes
of raising awareness about the illegal immigrant issue and the implications
it has relative to gang and race-related violence here.
The rift between the Shaws and the district attorney's office was exposed
earlier this month when Jamiel Shaw Sr., 47, and his ex-wife Anita
Shaw, 43, met with District Attorney Steve Cooley to complain about
Michele Hanisee, the prosecutor on the case.
Jamiel Shaw said Hanisee pressured him to stop pushing for the law
and threatened to depict their son as a gang member unless they dropped
demands that she prosecute the case as a hate crime.
“Basically, she came across as being pro-immigration,” Shaw
said May 13. “She was definitely putting pressure on the family.”
The district attorney's office denied Shaw's claims, but spokeswoman
Sandi Gibbons said Hanisee was taken off the case because it “was
a marriage that wasn't working.”
Hanisee referred questions to Gibbons, who said the prosecutor had
no reason to pressure the Shaws or to claim their son was a gang member.
Two new prosecutors were assigned to the case, and investigators are
taking a fresh look at whether hate crimes could be charged. An earlier
initial investigation found no evidence to warrant the charge, Gibbons
said.
Prosecutors say Espinoza, believed to be a member of the 18th Street
gang, drove to Shaw's neighborhood and shot him after asking him a
question about his gang affiliation. Espinoza had been released from
jail on weapons charges just one day before the shooting.
Espinoza's attorney Jorge Guzman declined to comment. A preliminary
hearing was set for last Thursday.
Politicians, residents and activists rallied around Shaw's family.
Shaw was a standout on the gridiron and appeared destined for a sports
scholarship at a top university. His mother was in the Army serving
in Iraq.
The mayor and other officials attended his funeral and placed a plaque
on the spot where Shaw was gunned down.
At a vigil two nights after his son's killing, Shaw Sr. appealed for
calm and said he did not believe his son was killed because of the
color of his skin. That changed, he said, when he learned Espinoza
was in the country illegally and had served time in jail, where hostilities
between black and Latino inmates run deep.
“He was killed because he was black,” Shaw said last Tuesday. “A
lot of these killings in LA have been disguised as gang because they
don't want the racial part to come out, the black and brown problem.”
County prosecutors have previously pressed high-profile hate crime
cases, and federal authorities recently accused members of a South
Los Angeles Latino gang of targeting blacks. But the degree to which
violence in the city is race-related remains a sensitive issue among
local officials.
Police Chief William Bratton recently reacted angrily at a news conference
when asked whether a spate of shootings was race-related. He softened
his rhetoric after some black residents criticized him for not taking
their fears seriously, but still points to statistics showing the vast
majority of homicides do not cross racial lines.
Police say Shaw was never in a gang, but a gang expert sparked an angry
reaction on talk radio and elsewhere by saying Shaw may have been targeted
for identifying in some way with a rival gang in his neighborhood.
Alex Alonso posted an article on a Website that quoted comments reportedly
written by Shaw on his MySpace.com page that included insulting remarks
about the 18th Street and Crip gangs. Alonso also said Shaw was wearing
a red belt when he was shot, a color associated with the Bloods.
Homicide detective Frank Carillo, who is overseeing the investigation,
said none of those things would make Shaw a gang member.
Most kids growing up in neighborhoods like Jamiel's would know gang
members. That in itself does not mean someone has a gang affiliation,
or else “that would make every student at a school a gang associate,” he
said.
Bloodhound, a self-described nonviolent member of the LA Bloods who
declined to give his real name for fear of reprisals, said three Blood
gangs are active in Jamiel's neighborhood. For kids growing up in the
area, it's almost impossible to avoid interacting with gang members
on some level.
“Younger cats his own age that are from one of the Blood gangs
would have applied a little peer pressure,” Bloodhound said.
Bulletin staff writer Allison Jean Eaton contributed to this report.
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