Police Violently Crack Down on L.A. Protests

Protesters across Los Angeles, including the vast majority who were demonstrating peacefully, were met with overwhelming violence from law enforcement this past weekend, after thousands of people took to the streets to push back against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on local workplaces. 

Local agencies like the Los Angeles Police Department have not carried out raids, but they have assisted federal agencies in shutting down protests — often in ways that breach crowd-control protocols. 

The Los Angeles Police Department has been recorded targeting journalists with less-lethal munitions, advancing on protesters while swinging their batons and repeatedly trampling with horses a downed protester. Such behavior appears to contradict agency use-of-force policy, which requires the use of de-escalation techniques whenever feasible and authorizes the use of less-lethal weapons when “the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officer or others.”

Since protests began last Friday, law enforcement agencies have deployed a multitude of crowd-control weapons including chemical irritants, stun grenades and kinetic munitions. According to Dr. Rohini Haar, a medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights, all such weapons can be extremely dangerous. 

“All of these weapons have caused deaths. Stun grenades, projectiles, tear gas, all of them,”  Dr. Haar said. 

The Trump administration told California officials that ICE activities would continue in the Los Angeles area into July. Many more protests are planned, leading experts like Dr. Haar to worry that the continued use of less-lethals will result in more injuries, or even deaths.

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Jeremy Lindenfeld is a California Local News Fellow.