Advocates rally for 19-year-old in deadly officer-involved shooting

SALINAS, Calif. (KION) Advocates gathered at La Paz Park ask for an end to the killings of BIPOC and justice for Gerardo Martinez, the 19-year-old that died in an officer-involved shooting.

At the time, the D.A. found police tried to negotiate with Martinez in Spanish. The family argues that Martinez could not understand because he spoke an indigenous dialect called Zapotec. The family says the shooting was unnecessary and MILPA representatives say they agree.

"There could have been some kind of level of de-escalation or standoff. I don't think that any police officer that started their shift a week ago, Friday, would have thought that they would have to shoot somebody. So, if they would have just approached it in a different way, this young man would have been alive today," said Cesar Lara, Director of Policy and Programs at MILPA.

The California Department of Justice did decline to do an investigation because Martinez was considered to be armed. The DOJ says that BB guns qualify as a deadly weapon, or, "any loaded weapon from which a shot, readily capable of produced death or another serious physical injury, may be discharged."

MILPA plans to create an altar in front of the Salinas Police Department of other individuals who have died in officer-involved shootings.