About 300 protesters gathered Tuesday night outside the Rampart Community Police Station in Westlake to protest the killing of a man by police over the weekend.
Protesters pelted the police station with eggs, rocks and bottles despite Police Chief Charlie Beck's plea for calm earlier in the day and his promise to thoroughly investigate the shooting. Police reported 22 arrests late Tuesday, mainly for failure to disperse and unlawful assembly, Officer Karen Rayner said.
Most of the action between police squads and protestors went down along West Sixth Street near MacArthur Park. At one point a police skirmish line held protesters at bay in front of Rampart Station.
"Heavy patrols'' were working the Westlake neighborhood around Sixth and Union all day.
LAPD officers have faced off the past three days with people upset over the fatal officer-involved shooting Sunday of Manuel Jamines, 37, a Guatemalan construction worker and father of three.
Officers fired at least two volleys of nonlethal foam projectiles at demonstrators, she said. No injuries to officers or civilians were reported.
Jamines was allegedly drunk and threatening passersby about 1 p.m. Sunday near Sixth and Union. He allegedly ignored orders by Los Angeles police bicycle officers to drop the weapon and instead lunged at them, prompting one of the officers to shoot him, police said.
"This was a very brief moment in time, just 40 seconds between first contact and the time of the shooting," Beck said. "He rushed the officers with a knife so he's controlling the timeframe. Sometimes officers can't create time or distance."
Beck said the timeline was based on preliminary interviews, and the department's Force Investigation Division will conduct an exhaustive probe. The three officers involved in the shooting have been temporarily reassigned during the investigation.
Beck said the officer who shot Jamines had no baton or stun gun with him. He said bicycle officers frequently do not carry the selection of non-lethal weapons found in patrol cars.
Jamines' neighbors described him as being drunk but not dangerous.
"Killing a drunk isn't right," said Jamines' cousin Juan Jaminez, 38, a day laborer. He and others said Jamines was a friendly, hardworking man who liked to drink on the weekends but wasn't violent.
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Jamines had a wife and three children -- ages 13, 6 and 8 -- in his hometown of Mazatenango, Guatemala, his cousin said. He came to the United States six years ago to find work as a day laborer and spent most of his time looking for jobs in the parking lot of the Home Depot a block away.
