THE mainstream media's silence over the death by shooting of a 14-year-old schoolboy by a Los Angeles police officer continues to deafen the East Los Angeles community.

Friends and neighbours of the slain youth, Antonio Gutierrez, have already led a demonstration which in turn sparked a two-day rebellion. Presumably, the fact that the emotional and defiant protest remained peaceful indicated to some that the cries of a community in grief were without merit.

The LAPD originally claimed that Michael Falvo shot Antonio because he had spotted a weapon and had warned the youngster.

However, eyewitnesses to the incident, on a street where the lighting had broken down, claimed that Falvo and another officer had crept up on Antonio with their lights down. Both the police pathologist report and the independent pathologist report demanded by the family state that Antonio was shot in the back.

Furthermore, the LAPD now admit that Antonio was not even carrying a gun, as was first claimed, when he was shot.

LAPD Chief Willie Williams issued an audacious statement admitting all these discrepancies, but capped it with an amazing observation: "With all the facts we have now, we have nothing to dispute with what the officer said occurred that night."

The involvement of Falvo in a homicide is another example of the LAPD's racist chickens coming home to roost. Falvo was one of 44 "dirty cops" identified by the Christopher Commission, set up in 1992 following the highly publicised videotaped beating of Rodney King by four LAPD officers and the uprising which followed their acquittal by an all-white jury in Simi Valley.

Rather than accede to the mild recommendations outlined in the Commission report, the Los Angeles authorities merely retired police chief Darryl Gates and replaced him with an outsider, Willie Williams.

A police disciplinary board admonished Falvo for his brutality following an inquiry into a 1987 incident where he handcuffed two men and forced them to kneel before him, before laying into them with his nightstick.

Nevertheless, he escaped the 1992 purge, following a pardon by ousted chief Gates. This final act by the cowboy cop and Williams' lily-livered refusal to overturn it has cost the Gutierrez family dearly.