Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced a curfew tonight for Downtown Los Angeles after five days of protests and minor clashes with police. “Th
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced a curfew tonight for Downtown Los Angeles after five days of protests and minor clashes with police.
“The curfew will be in place from 8 p.m. tonight until 6 a.m. tomorrow,” announced Bass, noting that it could last for several days and would be reevaluated tomorrow. “Everyone must abide by this curfew.”
The boundaries of the area impacted are relatively miniature: One square mile from the 5 freeway to the 110 freeway and from the 10 to the point where the 110 and the 5 merge. The mayor emphasized that the protests have been circumscribed to roughly this one square mile across the 500-plus square miles that make up L.A.
“Limited exceptions will apply for residents, people traveling to and from work and credentialed media representatives,” said Bass.
“If you are within that curfew during the restricted hours without a legal exemption, you will be arrested,” said LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell.
The area under curfew encompasses Disney Hall, the Taper, the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, Crypto.com Areana, L.A. Live, the Convention Center, City Hall and Union Station.
In fact, Disney Hall canceled a performance. “Due to the curfew put in place for downtown Los Angeles, tonight’s Seoul Chamber Music concert has been canceled at Walt Disney Concert Hall,” according to a statement.
Bass also said a “local emergency” has been declared and that the curfew was necessary after dozens of businesses were looted last night.
The recent protests, sparked by federal immigration enforcement efforts in Los Angeles and more recently President Trump’s order to have U.S. Marines deploy in the city, led to dozens of arrests today as demonstrators gathered outside the downtown Metropolitan Detention Center and a splinter group made its way onto the Hollywood (101) Freeway, briefly blocking both directions of traffic.
The federal detention center on Alameda and Aliso streets has been a common site of protests over the past four days, along with the nearby federal building and federal courthouse. The nearby federal building on Los Angeles Street houses the local office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Hundreds of people ultimately gathered outside MDC Tuesday afternoon, but National Guard troop formed a skirmish line to prevent them from entering the facility. By early afternoon, the Los Angeles Police Department had ordered the crowd to disperse, and many protesters made their way either north or south on Alameda Street, away from the MDC.
A group of several hundred protesters marched east on Temple Street then made their way north to the 101 Freeway, poured through a gap in a chain link fence and walked onto the freeway, blocking traffic on both sides.
California Highway Patrol officers, however, wasted little time and took aggressive action to push the crowd off the roadway. At least two people were seen being taken into custody as they struggled with CHP officers pushing them back.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, 96 people were arrested on suspicion of failure to disperse during Monday night’s demonstrations. One person was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, another on suspicion of resisting arrest and one on suspicion of vandalism. Another 14 people were arrested on suspicion of looting.
Two officers were injured during the Monday unrest. They were treated at a hospital and released, according to the LAPD. Numerous less-lethal rounds were fired by officers from the LAPD and other partner agencies Monday night and early Tuesday morning. Police eventually demobilized around 3 a.m. Tuesday.
Mayor Karen Bass condemned the looting, noting in a social media post that people who are vandalizing and burglarizing stores are unaffiliated with people legitimately protesting on behalf of immigrants.
Trump over the weekend federalized 2,000 California National Guard troops and ordered them to be deployed to Los Angeles, despite protests by Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other local officials who said such a move would further exacerbate tensions and lead to more intense protests.
But Trump doubled-down on the move Monday, ordering an additional 2,000 Guard troops into the city, while also directing 700 U.S. Marines to move into Los Angeles and support the Guard’s mission of protecting federal facilities and personnel. Pentagon officials said Tuesday the deployment is expected to cost about $134 million.
The state of California sued Trump on Monday to overturn the federalization of National Guard troops, and it filed an emergency motion in federal court in Northern California Tuesday seeking a restraining order to block the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines. It was unclear when a hearing on the matter might be held.
Newsom also condemned the move, saying Marines “shouldn’t be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial president. This is un-American.”
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, meanwhile, said his agency had been given no formal notice about Marines being deployed to the city, and he said without better coordination, their arrival could present “a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.”
McDonnell indicated tonight that his department has everything it needs to protect the city which, he said, was “nowhere near” needing federal troops on the street. In fact, he said, the next move would be to request more aid from the neighboring counties, not the feds.
“The sequence would be: We request mutual aid from partner agencies throughout the seven county area. The next step, then, is though the governor — the sheriff to the governor and the emergency OES at the state — that the national guard be deployed. We are nowhere near that in this environment. We believe we can do what we need to do with the resources that we now have access to.”
City News Service contributed to this report.
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