Deaths of Guillermo Sanchez and Guillardo Sanchez

Last updated

The deaths of Guillermo Sanchez and Guillardo Sanchez occurred on July 16, 1970, when the Los Angeles Police Department raided their apartment at 826 E. 7th St. in downtown Los Angeles in the U.S. state of California. The cousins were both shot and killed during the raid. Guillermo Beltran Sanchez was 22 years old, Guillardo Alcazar Sanchez was 21. [1] The incident was dubbed the mistake shooting by the newspapers. [2] [3] Journalist Ruben Salazar, who would himself be killed by an L.A. County sheriff's deputy in August 1970, featured interviews with survivors of the raid on KMEX. [4] The following year the militant Chicano Liberation Front claimed responsibility for bombing Los Angeles City Hall with a telephone message that stated that the bomb was "in memory of the Sanchez brothers." [5]

Guillermo Sanchez was allegedly killed first, and almost immediately, by LAPD Sgt. Marshall F. Gaines, who kicked down the door and fired. [1] Guillardo Sanchez was killed by a "fusillade" of almost 20 buckshot pellets fired by LAPD officer Jeffrey J. Fedrizzi, LAPD officer Hector R. Zapeda, and San Leandro PD officer William Kinsella. [1] Both Guillardo Sanchez, and another man, Angel Michael Barteleno, saw fit to jump out the second-story window to escape the gunfire. [1] [6] Barteleno broke his leg in the fall. Sanchez lay beside him in a pool of blood, dead or dying. [6] A fourth man, Ramon Sanchez, sprained an ankle while jumping for his life. [7]

The cops were allegedly looking for a murder suspect from San Leandro, California, Daniel Gorostiza, who was unknown to the six men in the apartment that night. [6] Gorostzia, wanted for question in the murder of his ex-girlfriend, surrendered to police the day after the Sanchez cousins were killed. The day after that he was released from jail and the charges were dropped due to faltering evidence. [8]

The district attorney filed criminal charges against the officers involved in the shooting, but they were dismissed by a judge. In March 1971, a federal grand jury indicted the officers on charges of civil-rights violations. [9] The grand jury simultaneously handed down indictments against an officer who compelled a woman of Chinese ancestry to disrobe in his patrol car, and against officers accused of conspiring to steal evidence from one location to plant it at another. [2] At issue was if the Mexican nationals in the apartment, most or all of whom were illegal immigrants, had legal standing for a civil-rights case. [1] The officers were later acquitted. [10]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicano</span> Subculture, chosen identity of some Mexican Americans in the United States

Chicano, Chicana, is an identity for Mexican Americans who have a non-Anglo self-image. Chicano was originally a classist and racist slur used toward low-income Mexicans that was reclaimed in the 1940s among youth who belonged to the Pachuco and Pachuca subculture. In the 1960s, Chicano was widely reclaimed in the building of a movement toward political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of indigenous descent. Chicano developed its own meaning separate from Mexican American identity. Youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into whiteness and embraced their own identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance. The community forged an independent political and cultural movement, sometimes working alongside the Black power movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rodney King</span> African American victim of police brutality (1965–2012)

Rodney Glen King was an African American man who was a victim of police brutality. On March 3, 1991, he was beaten by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers during his arrest after a pursuit for driving while intoxicated on the I-210. An uninvolved individual, George Holliday, filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and sent the footage to local news station KTLA. The footage showed an unarmed King on the ground being beaten after initially evading arrest. The incident was covered by news media around the world and caused a public furor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Los Angeles Police Department</span> Municipal law enforcement agency of Los Angeles, California, U.S.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal law enforcement agency of Los Angeles, California, United States. With 9,974 officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the third-largest municipal police department in the United States, after the New York City Police Department and the Chicago Police Department.

<i>The Revolt of the Cockroach People</i> Book by Oscar Zeta Acosta

The Revolt of the Cockroach People is a novel by Oscar Zeta Acosta. It tells the story of a Chicano lawyer, "Buffalo Zeta Brown," fictionalizing events from Oscar Acosta's own life, including the East L.A. walkouts at Garfield High School, the founding of the Brown Berets, the Christmas protests at St. Basil's church, the Castro v. Superior Court decision of 1970, Acosta's run for sheriff of Los Angeles County later that year, the Chicano National Moratorium, and the death of Ruben Salazar, who is referred to as "Roland Zanzibar" in the novel. Acosta uses the historical events of the late 1960s and early 1970s "as the context for the construction of a Chicano identity and the realization of a revolutionary class consciousness."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daryl Gates</span> Chief of Los Angeles Police Department

Daryl Francis Gates was the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) from 1978 to 1992. His length of tenure in this position was second only to that of William H. Parker. Gates is co-credited with the creation of SWAT teams with LAPD's John Nelson, who others claim was the originator of SWAT in 1965. Gates also co-founded D.A.R.E.

The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Vietnam War. Led by activists from local colleges and members of the Brown Berets, a group with roots in the high school student movement that staged walkouts in 1968, the coalition peaked with a August 29, 1970 march in East Los Angeles that drew 30,000 demonstrators. The march was described by scholar Lorena Oropeza as "one of the largest assemblages of Mexican Americans ever." It was the largest anti-war action taken by any single ethnic group in the USA. It was second in size only to the massive U.S. immigration reform protests of 2006.

"Strange Rumblings in Aztlan" is an article published in Rolling Stone #81, dated April 29, 1971, and written by Hunter S. Thompson. It was included in the first volume of Thompson's Gonzo Papers, The Great Shark Hunt, published in 1979.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brown Berets</span> Civil and human rights organization

The Brown Berets is a pro-Chicano paramilitary organization that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s. David Sanchez and Carlos Montes co-founded the group modeled after the Black Panther Party. The Brown Berets was part of the Third World Liberation Front. It worked for educational reform, farmworkers' rights, and against police brutality and the Vietnam War. It also sought to separate the American Southwest from the control of the United States government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruben Salazar</span> Mexican-American civil rights activist and journalist; killed by riot police in 1970

Ruben Salazar was a civil rights activist and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, the first Mexican-American journalist from mainstream media to cover the Chicano community.

Bloody Christmas was the severe beating of seven civilians by members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on December 25, 1951. The attacks left five Mexican American and two white young men with broken bones and ruptured organs, and were properly investigated only after lobbying from the Mexican American community. The internal inquiry by Los Angeles Chief of Police William H. Parker resulted in eight police officers being indicted for the assaults, 54 being transferred, and 39 suspended.

OVS is a Mexican American (Chicano) gang from Ontario, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicano Movement</span> Social and political movement combating racism in the United States

The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States inspired by prior acts of resistance among people of Mexican descent, especially of Pachucos in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Black Power movement, that worked to embrace a Chicano/a identity and worldview that combated structural racism, encouraged cultural revitalization, and achieved community empowerment by rejecting assimilation. Before this, Chicano/a had been a term of derision, adopted by some Pachucos as an expression of defiance to Anglo-American society. With the rise of Chicanismo, Chicano/a became a reclaimed term in the 1960s and 1970s, used to express political autonomy, ethnic and cultural solidarity, and pride in being of Indigenous descent, diverging from the assimilationist Mexican-American identity. Chicanos also expressed solidarity and defined their culture through the development of Chicano art during El Movimiento, and stood firm in preserving their religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Centro Cultural de la Raza</span> Non-profit organization

The Centro Cultural de la Raza is a non-profit organization with the specific mission to create, preserve, promote and educate about Chicano, Mexicano, Native American and Latino art and culture. It is located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California.The cultural center supports and encourages the creative expression “of the indigenous cultures of the Americas.” It is currently a member of the American Alliance of Museums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LAPD Metropolitan Division</span> Division of the Los Angeles Police Department

Metropolitan Division, commonly referred to as Metro Division or just Metro, is a division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) under its Special Operations Group. Metropolitan Division is responsible for managing the LAPD's specialized crime suppression, K-9, mounted, and SWAT units, named "platoons".

La Raza was a bilingual newspaper and magazine published by Chicano activists in East Los Angeles from 1967-1977. The paper played a seminal role in the Chicano Movement, providing activists a platform to document the abuses and inequalities faced by Mexican-Americans in Southern California. Taking a photojournalistic approach, the editors and contributors at La Raza were able to capture images of police brutality, segregation, and protests that rallied support to the Chicano cause.

Rosalio Muñoz is a Chicano activist who is most recognized for his anti-war and anti-police brutality organizing with the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War. On August 29, 1970, Muñoz and fellow Chicano activist Ramses Noriega organized a peaceful march in East Los Angeles, California in which over 30,000 Mexican Americans were in attendance to protest the war in Vietnam. The event became a site of police brutality after sheriffs attacked and tear gassed the crowd, leading to the deaths of three people, including Muñoz's friend and Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar.

David Sanchez is an American civil rights activist, and founding member of the Brown Berets. In the 1960s and 70s he was heavily involved in the Chicano civil rights and political movements.

The 1967 Century City demonstrations, also known as the 1967 Century City police riots, was an anti-Vietnam War protest which took place on June 23, 1967, in the Century City neighborhood of Los Angeles. Beginning with a demonstration against the war by an estimated 10,000 protestors, the march was soon stopped and LAPD officers began attacking believing that a mob was forming. In the end, 51 arrests were made and an unknown number of protesters were left injured.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicano Liberation Front</span> 1970s American terrorist group

The Chicano Liberation Front (CLF) was an underground revolutionary group in California, United States, that committed dozens of bombings and arson attacks in the Los Angeles area in the early 1970s. The radical militant group publicly claimed responsibility for 28 bombings between March 1970 and July 1971 in a taped message sent to the Los Angeles Free Press. Their targets were typically banks, schools and supermarkets. They also claimed responsibility for a bomb at Los Angeles City Hall. They were more than likely responsible for explosions at a downtown federal building and at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice, although those incidents remain officially unsolved.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Police Gave No Warning in Two ' Mistake' Deaths, Survivor Says". The Los Angeles Times. 1971-07-29. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  2. 1 2 "Grand Jury Indicts 6 Policemen on Rights Violations". Valley News. 1971-03-04. p. 7. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  3. ↑ "Suit Filed in Mistake Shooting of Mexicans". Valley News. 1970-10-25. p. 42. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  4. ↑ "Ruben Salazar: 12 Years Later Questions Remain". The Monitor. 1982-08-27. p. 12. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  5. ↑ "Press-Telegram 02 Apr 1971, page 1". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  6. 1 2 3 "Police Shot Without Warning, Witness Says". The Los Angeles Times. 1971-07-29. p. 32. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  7. ↑ "Seven officers charged in slaying of Mexicans". The Argus. 1970-07-22. p. 14. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  8. ↑ "Suspect in San Leandro Case Released". The Los Angeles Times. 1970-08-01. p. 21. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  9. ↑ "Chicanos Tied to LA Blast". The Capital Journal. Salem, Oregon. 1971-04-06. p. 8. Retrieved 2023-04-26.
  10. ↑ OLMO, FRANK del (1995-08-27). "PERSPECTIVE ON LATINOS : Salazar: a Pioneer, Not a Martyr : The late Times columnist is best remembered for bringing professionalism to news on Spanish- language television". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.