Sandy Banks: Parents of Jamiel Shaw Jr. speak to City Council

He’s a grieving father, not a politician. He apologized because he didn’t know whether to say “illegal” or “undocumented.” But Jamiel Shaw’s appeal to the Los Angeles City Council for a new law allowing the deportation of gang members made clear that the anti-illegal-immigration movement has a new, and most unlikely, poster child.

Shaw’s teenage son, Jamiel Jr., was killed last month near his Arlington Heights home. The man charged with his murder is an 18th Street gang member, in this country illegally. Now the Shaw family is pushing for a change in the city’s “sanctuary” policy, to allow gang members who are illegal immigrants to be deported.

Anita Shaw, Jamiel Jr.’s mom, is a soldier called home for his funeral from her second tour of duty in Iraq. “I’m safer in Iraq than my son is on the streets of the United States,” she told the council. “And that’s not right.”

The Shaws’ comments drew prolonged applause from the audience, which included a contingent from the border patrol force, the Minutemen Project. Minute-woman Dee Barrow drove in from Upland to support the family’s push for tougher legislation.

“We have enough of our own criminals to worry about,” she said, “without having to worry about the foreign ones.”

--Sandy Banks

Photo: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Concerned Chicano]

I don't disagree with the efforts of Jamiel's parents to have illegal immigrant criminals arrested and subsequently deported. I am concerned that this new effort against illegal immigration will become a form of racial profiling. I don't agree with any " sanctuary" policy but if this new effort to catch illegal immigrants has any perception of "racial profiling" an even bigger rift between Blacks and Hispanics will evolve.

[Hugh Beaumont]

Another casualty of the "progressive" mind set.

Illegals have no rights under our Constitution. None; zero.

Yet there exists in our land a sprawling bureaucracy dedicated to their advocacy and representation.

It's so typically American that tragedy has to strike before we wake up the sheer idiocy of our own self inflicted wounds.

it's a shame that good folks like the Shaws have bare the burden of it all.

[Robin]

It is reprehensible that a gang member in the U.S. illegally killed an innocent high school kid. The City of Los Angeles must deport illegal alien gang members so that no more of our children are killed. No family in the U.S. should have to suffer and go through what the Shaw family is experiencing!!!!

[sean]

The way the Council reacted to this heartfelt protest was predictable, and reflected very poorly on those who spoke out against it. Richard Alarcon, looking barely able to contain his fury, jumped up to accuse the speakers of fomenting racial division between black and brown people, accused them of ignorance and getting their marching orders and simple-minded ideas from racists and "radio talk show hosts."
Shame on you, Mr. Alarcon! Rosendahl had stood up trying to deflect the issue, by saying the Council and public needed a scheduled discussion sometime of SP40.

Then Jamiel Shaw's parents spoke, movingly, in ways that Sandy Banks described, hopefully making even Alarcon feel ashamed of himself for trying to make THEM out to be the villains, the divisive one. What kind of people actually oppose deporting illegal criminal gangbangers, including those with long, long rap sheets like Espinoza, already by age 19?

As Mr. Shaw said, he was in the city's databanks of known gang members (18th St., an Hispanic gang known loyal to LaEme, whose plaform it is to regain the streets for "La Raza," including getting rid of blacks). Mr. Shaw quoted Dane Feinstein's office as acknowledging that some 80% of 18th St. gangmembers are illegal. So, why wasn't Espinoza asked about his legal status and deported,
instead of being sent out onto the streets to kill his son a few hours later? Intead of answers, the brush-off.

Jill Stewart of the L A Weekly already has a report out on this in her L A Now Daily Blog, and was incredulous at the brush-off, but also at the way Council President Eric Garcetti blew off this issue to jump into the matter if illegal billboarlds being put up by Clear Channel/CBS Outdoors, and the transparently fradululent and shady way they've managed to turn the black and Hispanic communities against the largely white westside.

Stewart's and Christine Pelicek's articles still online in the Weekly have must-read backgrounds on ClearChannel/CBS, and the way they've refused to honor their commitment to pay the city to inspect some 11,000 billboards they have up illegally, and remove the illegal ones. (Thanks to Rocky Delgadillo's brilliant legal maneuves on their behalf, instead of doing what the City Council repeatedly told him to do.) Bottom line: This is a shady, manipulative company bilking the city and county of many millions of dollars it owes, AND it's suing us.

BUT ClearChannel/CBS has offered to kick a few bucks toward a park in "poor" areas so long as they get away with their illegal activities, targeting the westside, namely, CDs5 and 11, WEiss's and Rosendahl's districts. Jan Perry and Ed Reyes (whose been targeting the westside, hillsides, valleys and Zev Yaroslavsky for attacks for some time) led the charge: the westsiders are selfish and greedy and want to deprive poor children of parks. NEver mind that they heart legal arguments from Weiss, and impassioned and highly logical arguments from residents that ClearChannel/CBS should in all decency unbundle the two isues, parks for the poor and billboard blight on the westside. Even one woman there for Jamiel's Law spoke against the westsiders and those who opposed ClearChannel, as depriving the poor of "social justice" in Jamiel's name.

What those like Alarcon and Reyes, who oppose Jamiel's law, had managed to do in a flash, is turn this into a "poor black and brown vs. greedy westside whites" issue, and they got the entire Council, except Weiss, to support ClearChannel/CBS over the law, the city which is owed millions from them, and against anything reasonable and right. Not just the minorities and ultra liberals like Garcetti and Rosendahl (who should have protected his district instead), Hahn and the Hispanics and African-Americans were only too happy to deflect attention from Jamiel's Law and the issue of illegal criminals to blaming westside whites, but so were clueless LaBonge, and Zine and Smith and Greuel.

I hope Jill Stewart and the L A Weekly aren't the only ones who see what's happening here. I hope even Sandy Banks will follow up: the issue is upholding the law, whether it's immigration or governance of billboards, not rewarding the lawbreakers who confuse the issues.

[Tex]

"Illegals have no rights under our Constitution. None; zero."

Wrong. All human beings within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States have constitutional rights. Read the 14th Amendment. Congress worded that amendment exactly as is, against a backdrop of over 100 years of American tradition of denying Constitutional rights to people of color.

Jamiel Shaw's murder is a tragedy and the criminal who murdered him should be punished to the full extent of the law; but let's not compound the tragedy by turning this into an excuse for Latino-bashing. Black and brown people of the city need to work together to protect each other against criminals of all stripes, not turn on one another and widen the rift.

[dan lestelle]

our goverment here in los angeles is afraid of our mayor and also we have a weak police chief who would rather tell our citizens to move if they dont like the policies created by our city goverment. as a reserve police officer for 19 years and having lived and grown up in the san fernado valley i have seen neighborhoods that should have been torn down turned into slum lord areas with nothing but drug dealers and illegall aliens and gang havens running the populations of that area, its a sad city where your kids cant go where they want to go without being accompanied 24/7 . our schools are overrun by these thugs and people just turn a blind eye. this is what you voted for and this is what you have. sadly to say i voted for villaragosa and i am highly dissappointed that he is a wast of a vote and is only conserned to further his family and friends personal agendas. as far as i am conserned ever time police book someone i dont care who it is the legal status should be checked and if they are here illegally we should deport immediatly. this last death should be blaimed entirely on our city goverment period. i hope they personally name people in a law suit.

[Smokey]

"Illegals have no rights under our Constitution. None; zero."

First off, illegals do not have the right to be in this country, Tex. Take care of that illegality, and other putative 'rights' don't matter at all.

They're ILLEGAL. Get it?

[Mary]

Ity's not Latino bashing...It's ILLEGAL Bashing and rightly deserved. If the preponderance of lawbreakers are Latino than that is just a fact. It is obvious that the majority of these invaders are Latino from mexico or latin American countries and DO NOT Belong here!!! Amerocans are being killed, stolen from and having their culture eroded by these disrespectful lawbreakers. Send them all back and let Americans have their country back from dirty polticians and corporate slavers. This death is on the heads of those idiots who don't understand the rule of law.Put Ted Kennedy ,Villagaroisa and George Bush on trial for this murder , for they are as culpable as anyone.

[Netterbahn]

So saddening that legislators are taking a tragic occurance like the untimely death of Jamiel Shaw and expoiting it to fit into their own political agenda. Theoretically I could claim that I've noticed that people from the State of Kansas have been murdering Californians "at an alarming rate" and if we deport all people from Kansas we could save lives. The fact that he was Illegal has absolutely nothing to do with the sad reality that he took another life. Does anyone see that this isn't solving the problem? It's not where this boy (and he is still a boy, only 19, regardless if he's considered a legal adult) was born, but couldn't we instead shift the focus to a horribly corrupt prison system that couldn't care less about rehabilitating inmates. Was maybe the fact that he had just gotten out of prison and was known to be a dangerous individual and WAS NOT put into any sort of post prison program at least partly responsible for this tragedy?

Is the problem that he was illegal? Or instead maybe that he was a misguided, disenfranchised HUMAN BEING? Please don't turn this into an issue that it's not. We have pleanty of full blooded, corn fed, good ol' Americans who commit deplorable crimes like this every day. It's tragic and it's not right to expolit it with personal poilitical agenda.

[Robert, L.A.]

I just came across this blog item and the last comment is completely devoid of any realistic view of the situation.

This is not a time for theory, but a time to be concerned with safety in the streets where that expectation of safety in many communities is really a fantasy, and for others, it’s something that can be shattered so abruptly, but not unexpectedly so.

The fact is that the erosion of personal responsibility of individuals that is so extensive that even now, as the comment above of May 15th reflects, is taken as a NORM and somehow reduces the criminal’s culpability. We have what we have. It can be turned around and be improved at least as a little measure of safety, but that's only when people are accountable for what they do. Many don’t want to do that. Instead, the preferred action is throwing up a lot of theories that tell us how it got that way.