The Crackdown on L.A. Protests is Costing the City Millions.

Law enforcement’s crackdown on recent protests across Los Angeles has cost the city more than $17 million — with the price tag likely to keep ballooning. 

The Los Angeles Police Department has played a critical role in violently shutting down protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement across the city since the Department of Homeland Security began executing immigration raids at local workplaces on June 6. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, immigration agents arrested more than 300 immigrants in Southern California between June 6 and June 11.

At the ensuing anti-ICE demonstrations, the LAPD has arrested 575 people and shot hundreds of crowd-control munitions. As of June 16, the city had spent more than $17.2 million on the LAPD’s response to protests, according to L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia. That is roughly four times the amount of funding allotted to the city’s Emergency Management Department for the entire fiscal year.

That large sum includes the massive response to June 14’s No Kings protests, when every one of the LAPD’s nearly 9,000 officers were mobilized and approved for overtime pay. The total does not include the potential cost of lawsuits against the LAPD, however, which may significantly drive up the final price tag. 

Police action during L.A. protests in 2020 have cost the city nearly $12 million and counting in settlements and jury awards, with many more cases yet to be adjudicated. Similar lawsuits in response to LAPD action at recent anti-ICE protests are already being pursued. 

Earlier this week, the L.A. Press Club filed suit against the police department and city over violence toward journalists covering the protests, according to its attorney Carol Sobel, who successfully sued the LAPD in 2020. 

“The whole world can see what’s going on. There probably weren’t enough [less-lethal] bullets to shoot all of the press and prevent coverage, but that would’ve been their goal had they been able to do it,” Sobel said. 

According to Sobel, the LAPD has repeatedly ignored laws implemented after the 2020 George Floyd protests by continuing to attack the press and indiscriminately deploying crowd-control weapons among protesters, which has resulted in significant injuries and may result in more litigation. The L.A. Police Commission has since announced its intention to investigate such accusations of excessive force complaints. 

The LAPD declined Capital & Main’s request for comment. 

Sobel expects many lawsuits against the LAPD for injuries caused by its crowd-control methods to be successful, which would leave the department — and by extension, the taxpayers — on the hook for many millions of dollars in damages. 

Those increased costs would put significant pressure on the city’s already strained budget, which was signed into law earlier this month and cuts more than 1,700 positions across city departments. Despite the cuts, that budget increased the LAPD’s funding by nearly $90 million. What’s more, the LAPD is now seeking an additional $12 million in funding to cover overtime pay for its protest crackdown. 

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