SCORES AIM DOWNTOWN PROTEST AT POLICE, JURY IN OREGON DEATH

Cries of "No justice! No peace! No justice! No peace!" bounced off the
buildings lining Main Street as about 150 to 175 people marched from Market
Square to Houston police headquarters Thursday afternoon.

With drivers stuck in rush-hour traffic looking on, students, senior
citizens, parents and children rallied downtown to protest the killing of
Pedro Oregon Navarro by police and a Harris County grand jury's clearing
the six officers involved except for indicting one on a charge of
misdemeanor criminal trespass

"When the badge is tarnished, we all bleed a little. End police brutality,"
said one sign.

"Justice should be blind, not D.A. (John B.) Holmes," said another.

The demonstration was nonviolent, but emotional and sometimes angry. "They
shot him nine times in the back! Nine times in the back!" shouted Eulalio
Sanchez to a group of people waiting for a bus. "Say, will they kick in
your door next?" yelled another protester to a passer-by.

Oregon, 22, was killed July 12 by officers who burst into his home without
a warrant, saying they had been told drugs were being sold there. Police
say Oregon, who had no criminal record, pointed a gun at them and the
shooting followed. Oregon's gun was never fired and no drugs were found.

A parade of leaders -- the Nation of Islam's Quanell X, U.S. Rep. Sheila
Jackson Lee, the League of United Latin American Citizens' spokesman Johnny
Mata -- took to the podium to speak out against Oregon's death. Mayor Lee
Brown sent a messenger who said, "The mayor stands against police
brutality."

Clutching a photograph of a handsome young man in a military uniform was
Sandra Torres, whose brother, Joe Campos Torres, a Vietnam veteran, drowned
in 1977 after police beat him and threw him into Buffalo Bayou. The failure
to seriously punish the officers led to the Moody Park riot a year later.

"I was 8 when they killed my brother," said Sandra Torres, 30. "Back then,
we didn't know what to say. Now it's different. I want to speak out. It's
been hurting 22 years. Cops getting away with murder; just a slap on the
wrist; ... killing innocent people. ... It affects everybody. Nobody
deserves to be treated like this."

Some protesters blamed Oregon's death on the "hysteria" created by the
government's war on drugs. Others called for District Attorney John B.
Holmes Jr. to take the case before another grand jury.

"The injustice in the Oregon home is a threat to your home," Justice of the
Peace Al Green said, "This could happen to any one of us."

Delbert Jackson, 36, a food service worker who came to show support for
Oregon's family, said, "I know the conditions police work under are real
stressful and we don't know the full facts. I can't chastise them because I
don't know all the facts. The family has had a loss. (Oregon's death) seems
unnecessary."