"Kris Ramirez never saw police as a threat. Growing up, his body didn't tense with us-versus-them dread when police cruisers drove through his Southeast Los Angeles neighborhood.
"If someone is wearing a uniform," Ramirez said, "you show respect."
Then last year, four days before Halloween, a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy shot and killed his brother, Oscar Jr., along railroad tracks near Paramount High School. Deputies said the 28-year-old didn't comply with orders and moved his arm in "a threatening manner." Ramirez was unarmed.
The Ramirez family marched in front of the Paramount sheriff's station and held vigils, but they struggled to find wider support for their cause. As the family grieved, the national Black Lives Matter movement picked up energy, bolstered locally by the fatal shooting of Ezell Ford, a mentally disabled black man, by LAPD officers.
Watching the protests over Ford's killing, Kris Ramirez felt frustrated: "Why can't we get that same type of coverage or help?"
The muted reaction to the deaths of Latinos in confrontations with police tells a larger story: Black Lives Matter is starkly different from Brown Lives Matter. In contrast to the fatal shootings of African Americans such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Walter Scott in South Carolina, deaths of Latinos at the hands of law enforcement haven't drawn nearly as much attention.
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the release of a video showing Gardena police officers shooting two men, killing Ricardo Diaz Zeferino, an unarmed Latino. The video has been viewed millions of times on YouTube. It generated national media coverage, but very little protest."
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