In the wake of Saturday night’s shooting of two L.A. County Sheriff’s Department deputies in Compton, several activists have come forward to denounce the violence and urge the department to engage in more dialogue with the community.

Najee Ali, an activist at the forefront of ongoing protests around the Aug. 31 fatal shooting of Dijon Kizzee, and LaWanda Hawkins, the founder of Justice for Murdered Children, a group that represents families of homicide victims, stood Monday morning outside St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood to deliver a reconciliatory message amid rising tensions between residents and law enforcement.

“We don’t support shooting. We don’t support the murder of anybody,” Ali told a group of reporters. “At the end of the day, we’re not against the Sheriff’s Department. We’re not against law enforcement. We are simply against police abuse, police racial profiling, police mistreatment of Black and brown residents within the city.”

Both deputies, one a 31-year-old mother of a 6-year-old boy and the other a 24-year-old man, were shot in the head near the Compton Metro station in what authorities have described as an ambush. They were listed in stable condition, and authorities are looking for the gunman who was captured on video firing into their patrol car.

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