No outcry For Latinos Killed By Police

On July 21, 2012, an article posted on AljazeerAmerica.com documented when police in California killed Manuel Angel Diaz, an unarmed, 25-year-old man, when he ran away as officers approached. The following day, another man, latino Joel Acevbido, was killed by police. Days of protests followed as hundreds took to the streets. Most were peaceful but rocks were thrown, store windows broken and cars vandalized. Police fired rubber bullets into the crowd.

The Anaheim riots received some national attention (pages A-11 and A-13 of The New York Times) but never reached the recent heights of similar events in Ferguson, Baltimore or Staten Island, claimed the article. Those protests sparked demonstrations in cities across the country and were covered around the clock by news networks, reviving the national dialogue over race relations.

Diaz and Acevedo are not household names. Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner are.

The obvious distinction: Diaz and Acevedo are Latinos, while the other victims of recent police incidents were African American. While Civil Right’s leaders like Martin Luther King made it a priority to highlight the terrorizing of black bodies on national news, Latinos have yet to have either a notable name who demands media attention, nor a movement that speaks on police brutality outside of immigration lines.

The disproportionately high rate of black killings may partially explain the lack of media coverage of Latino deaths by police. But a study by Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race last year – titled The Latino Media Gap – found fault in the media’s approach to Latino coverage and said that Latino media participation is sorely lacking, according to the article.

Stories of Latinos on the other hand make up less than one percent of main news coverage, according to  Haya El Nasssar, with the majority being of Latino law breakers; where as, in 2013 alone, there was not one Latin anchor or executive producer in any of the nation’s top news programs. That same article noted only 1.8 percent of new producers are Latino.

 The same remains today as new coverage for Black bodies at the hands of police brutality continue to gain coverage where as Latino deaths remain uncovered, however, there may be an explanation to this, though it does not necessarily make it right.

Public perception of Latinos also tends to diffuse the outcry over police killings. “No matter how many are citizens, they’re still seen in the American mind as foreigners.”

Diaz and Acevedo were third-generation Americans.