Toddler and father killed by police

At the funeral for 19-month-old Suzie Peña, one person summed up the feelings of many who attended when he shouted in Spanish: “The police are assassins!”

At the front gate of the car business of Jose Pena in Watts. Inside of the gate Pena and daughter Suzie were killed by police. Neighbors, activists and children decorated the gate with flowers, toys and messages of support and love for the family. Many of the signs call the police "baby killers" nd demand community control of the LAPD.

Suzie and her father, Jose Peña, were both shot on July 10 in Watts when the father, with his daughter in his arms, exchanged gun fire with a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team, hitting one police officer in the shoulder. Instead of calming the situation, the police decided that neither Peña nor his daughter were worth a little more time and negotiation—which the family was pleading for—and decided to fire on a desperate man holding a baby and a gun.

Forensics have shown that the bullet that killed Suzie was fired by the SWAT team—one of 90 rounds the police blasted at the Peñas. Though the LAPD tried to conceal the coroner’s report, even Los Angeles Chief of Police William J. Bratton assumed the LAPD killed the child. He, however, put all the blame on the father, calling him a “cold-blooded killer,” even though there is no evidence that Peña killed anyone.

Bratton, on the other hand, has a long record of police brutality and killings done under his watch in Los Angeles. And from 1994-1996, when Bratton served as chief of police in New York City, 75 people were killed by the police there.

Instead of showing remorse for Suzie’s death, Bratton insulted the grieving Peña family, saying they were distorting the truth. “This father was not a father of the year, as the family is now attempting to portray him,” Bratton said shortly after the tragedy.

Lorena Lopez, Peña’s wife, has pointed out that the reckless endangerment of life by the LAPD is the real issue here, and has called for justice in the death of her husband and daughter.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Lopez and her older daughter called the police seeking help because they were being threatened by Peña, who also threatened to kill Suzie. They communicated that he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. What they wanted was for the police to keep their family, especially the baby, safe from harm.

When police arrived, the family asked to participate in the negotiations with Peña. But the LAPD SWAT division refused. With an officer hit, they decided instead to even the score—and then some.

“It’s been cruel what’s happened to my brother,” German Peña told the Los An gel es Times. “They didn’t have any patience, none at all, knowing that my niece was with him, that he was a father.”

This fatal shooting comes two months after deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department volleyed 120 bullets into a vehicle at an unarmed man in a Compton residential neighborhood. Their reason? He failed to stop and was leading them around the block—-at 35 miles per hour. The driver was struck four times, and many stray police bullets spray ed into nearby houses.

Local activists point out that this reckless racist police behavior is not experienced in more affluent neighborhoods, like Beverly Hills, where fewer Black and Latin@ people live.

Newly elected Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has refused to put the blame for the killing of the Peñas squarely on the police. Instead, he has asked the police chief and the family to tone down their remarks.

Given the increased police brutality and killings in South Los Angeles, a much more appropriate response is the loud and militant demand for justice voiced at demonstrations organized by the family at the site of the killing.

Many believe an additional important step would be to fire and then jail Chief Bratton as an accomplice to the numerous killings of Black and Latin@ people by the police force he heads.