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The chief of the Los Angeles Police Department says the anti-ICE protests ravaging parts of his city have “gotten out of control” and may justify the presence of the National Guard, adding that officers did not delay a response to help out the feds.
Chief Jim McDonnell was responding to a claim by Todd Lyons, the acting director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who said it took local authorities more than two hours to respond to an emergency call for assistance when demonstrators first clashed with agents on Friday.
“It didn’t happen,” the chief said.
He said ICE didn’t give his department advance notice of its operation so officers weren’t positioned to respond. Once the call came in, they responded in 38 minutes.
Chief McDonnell acknowledged that sounded high but said it was because they needed time to organize a sufficiently sized and equipped force to counter the already large numbers of protesters. And he said the federal officers had already used tear gas, which some of his officers weren’t equipped for.
The Washington Times has reached out to ICE for comment.
Chief McDonnell said President Trump’s decision Saturday to federalize the National Guard and deploy them to the city wasn’t the way he would have done it, but he said given the level of violence by Sunday night he needed to reassess.
“Do we need them? Well, looking at tonight, this thing has gotten out of control,” he said.
The police chief said he’d need to know more about what the Guard’s role and capabilities are before he’d say for certain.
Los Angeles has been the scene of three days of violent clashes.
Chief McDonnell said protesters have fired deadly commercial-grade fireworks at officers. He said one tactic is to bring a cinder block and hammer concealed in a backpack. Once at a clash site, rioters will smash the block and use the chunks as weapons.
He said protesters have also smashed concrete bollards outside a federal building and used those pieces as weapons.
English (US) ·