Anyone who harbored the illusion that police-“community” relations would be saner in majority Hispanic, rather than in black, neighborhoods must now put that illusion aside. Unfolding in Hispanic Los Angeles is one of the most outrageous libels against the police in recent memory, driven by the illegal El Salvadoran “community.”

On July 10, Jose Raul Pena, an illegal Salvadoran previously deported for cocaine possession, engaged in an hours-long shooting attack on Los Angeles police officers, during which he used his abducted 19-month-old daughter as a shield against the return fire. Finally, after unloading endless fusillades at the police and wounding one officer, Pena was fatally shot by a SWAT officer. Not surprisingly, his toddler-shield was killed, too.

And who is the villain in this tragic bloodbath, according to Pena’s family and the vicious protesters who have filled the streets daily since the shooting? Not the father who would sacrifice his daughter to gain a clear shot at the police, but the Los Angeles Police Department. And yet, amazingly, Los Angeles officers are still patrolling the Watts neighborhood where Pena tried to kill them and which is now slandering them.

Here are the lies that the “community” is telling about Jose Raul Pena and the police: “The police killed my daughter. I want justice,” said Lorena Lopez, the unmarried mother of Pena’s 18-month-old daughter, Susie Lopez. “It’s cruel what happened to my brother,” said German Pena. “He was a good person.”

Oh really? Here’s how the attempted cop massacre began. At 2 pm on July 10, Lorena Lopez called the police and filed a domestic threats report against Pena. Pena then abducted his 18-month-old daughter Susie from the mother’s home and took her to his car lot. Next, Pena’s 16-year-old stepdaughter called the police from the car lot, saying that Pena was physically threatening her. The police arrive, and Pena starts firing at them while holding his toddler in front of him. The police help the stepdaughter escape the line of fire. Pena continues to shoot, even as the SWAT team is trying to negotiate over the phone with Pena to peacefully surrender. Shooting continues for the next hour and a half, with the toddler always used by the coward as a make-shift bullet-proof vest. After hitting an officer, Pena goes down, his daughter with him.

During the incident, Pena used a 9-millimeter Beretta pistol which had been stolen last year in a burglary in Oregon. His office at the car dealership contained a bag of cocaine and a half-drunk bottle of Tequila—consistent with the illegal Pena’s previous deportation for cocaine possession.

Videotape captured images of Pena shooting at the police while holding his daughter, yet his relatives are questioning not only whether he used his daughter as a shield, but whether he was even armed at all, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Nightly anti-cop protests at the shooting site have grown so violent that community activists have asked the public to stay away. On July 14, protesters surrounded an officer making a routine traffic stop and began threatening him. He escaped, but the police needed to call a tactical alert for the second night in a row, reports the Times.

The New York Times has been covering the story, too—completely agnostically about where the fault lies. Naturally, they cannot be bothered to share with the public the fact that Pena was illegal—not just illegal, in fact, but, as a returned deportee, an alien felon.

Los Angeles’s newly elected Hispanic mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, has been assiduously careful not to assign blame, even though there can not be a shadow of a doubt about who was the malefactor here. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” he said on July 14. “We’re going to examine every fact, [and] there will be transparency throughout. That’s important.” No, more important is to back up your officers who every day put their lives on the line to try to protect people who are happy to see them verbally and physically attacked.

Pena’s abused girlfriend, Lorena Lopez, immediately hired a lawyer. Expect a million-dollar lawsuit against the LAPD and the Los Angeles taxpayers for a murder committed by a man who should not have even been in the country.