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Garcetti: It's not tough to get in a fight with a police officer, it's tough to not fight back.
Uh.
Uh.
Curren Price: We want the legal process to play itself out.
One might argue that the legal process has done just that, Councilmember.
One might argue that the legal process has done just that, Councilmember.
Garcetti began his remarks by suggesting that everyone was shocked by how we could make it to the LA of today from the LA of two days ago. For him, this is characteristic dissembling. LA has not changed, and the anger is not new. https://twitter.com/DocMellyMel/status/1266864122232139776?s=20
Garcetti: We will use the law to re-establish your liberty.
Manages to make it sound like a threat, too
Manages to make it sound like a threat, too
Garcetti: The work of making America a less racist country is not just work for African Americans
At which point I compulsively suck my teeth
At which point I compulsively suck my teeth
It's worse than that, he is - in the grand tradition of his people - placing the majority of the burden to eliminate racism in America on Black Americans. And by extension transmuting the continued existence of white racism into black failure https://twitter.com/mattagertz/status/1266868087732662273?s=20
Garcetti: Racism thrives on division... if we want to make a caricature of every person wearing a badge, racism will win
Boy, fuck you
Boy, fuck you
Garcetti, on murders by police in other cities: This is racism and we all cry out for an end to this racism
Garcetti, asked about LA police: Hey, nobody's perfect!
Garcetti, asked about LA police: Hey, nobody's perfect!
Garcetti says "Let's have some love with our outrage" the way he might order hashbrowns with his french toast
Garcetti: We should not be looking to policing to solve every problem, we need to invest in other solutions
Who wants to break the news to him about the budget he wrote
Who wants to break the news to him about the budget he wrote
Garcetti has spent, conservatively, 5x as much time during this conference speaking about 1992 as he has spent talking about 2020. It's telling.
The picture-in-picture is producing some really wild juxtapositions
Garcetti: Have you registered to vote?
Yes, literally.
Yes, literally.
Garcetti says every testing center in the city of LA has been closed. This appears to have been a punitive response. In his response as to why the centers were all closed rather than in specific areas: "We're not going to stand for the burning of police cars."
As Garcetti continues, aerial images of protestors using dumpsters to erect barricades in street intersections.
Garcetti says police do not deserve to have bricks thrown at their heads. Unclear if he is referencing a specific event or if this is a hypothetical situation he is pitching.
Correction, the dumpsters are not being used as barricades, they are being used as battering rams to breach the LAPD staging ground at Television City.
The fences are open
Prof. @NiggaTheory on NBC: Mayor Garcetti, you sound very eloquent when you speak about these issues on TV but we all see what your values really are when we look at your budget.
NBC anchor just says "historically" LA "has had" "problems with race"
A different anchor keeps saying "once peaceful protests have turned violent" like it's the product of a bad dice roll, rather than the willful antagonism by police of a protest against police violence.
Anchor and helicopter pilot are mustering more genuine emotion for a splinter group of protestors attempting and failing to light a flag on fire - "really hard to watch our flag be discredited like that" - than they have for the racism and loss of life being protested.
Protestors have been blocked from entering the 101 right-of-way. Anchor and helicopter pilot exchange:
Anchor: I imagine this must be a traffic nightmare
Helicopter pilot: It really is
Anchor: I imagine this must be a traffic nightmare
Helicopter pilot: It really is
Curfews are spreading. Garcetti announced a curfew to be enforced in downtown at 8PM. NBC now announcing that will be the case in the entire cities of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.
Mayor @LindseyPHorvath is being asked about police coordination to maintain curfews on the westside. West Hollywood is patrolled by the Sheriff's Dept, Beverly Hills and LA, of course, have their own departments.
Sounds like there will be a very visible police presence throughout the westside. Stay safe, y'all.
Sheriff Villanueva is being asked about enforcing tonight's curfew. Says they deploy mobile squads of 20-22 officers at a time. Says enforcement will be on case-by-case basis, but with 3 different law enforcement agencies in play, who knows what will actually happen.
To be clear, he didn't say the part after the ",but..." that is me editorializing
Villanueva, asked by an anchor what he tells officers in his command, says that his officers share in the public's outrage so long as they respect the rule of law.
The sheriff's dept, it might be observed, has had more than its fair share of constitutional policing complaints. Villanueva, who oversees one of if not the largest jailed populations in the country, has bristled at civilian oversight supported by Black Lives matter.
Councilmember Koretz: As upset as anyone about the "senseless" death of George Floyd, but the violence and looting in downtown Los Angeles last night is no less troubling
Koretz: I have requested that the Mayor expand the curfew to our area, downtown is recovering, but now this area (Fairfax) is "under siege"
Koretz: If we don't have the officers to do that, we have national guard at our disposal and I would ask for those resources to be deployed as well
There is a reason I refer to the cities in LA county as fortified homeowner’s associations, and this is basically why https://twitter.com/nickadamsweb/status/1266886847990386688?s=21 https://twitter.com/nickadamsweb/status/1266886847990386688
Here’s the one-line report on test centers closing https://twitter.com/grouchomarxist/status/1266897427379847169?s=21 https://twitter.com/grouchomarxist/status/1266897427379847169
Pilot: Look at the destruction in Fairfax, all of this chalk on the ground is from tear-gas canisters.
Then blames it on individuals who come "with gas masks and cones" for the cops using tear gas - "it's the intention" of these individuals that has caused "this destruction"
Then blames it on individuals who come "with gas masks and cones" for the cops using tear gas - "it's the intention" of these individuals that has caused "this destruction"
People showing up prepared for the cops to deploy vast amounts of tear gas are, I suppose, effectively causing the police to deploy vast amounts of tear gas.
NBC reporting that all of LA is under curfew as of 8PM until 5:30 AM.
Pilot: Look at the looted mess here (at the Grove)
Pilot: Look at the looted mess here (at the Grove)
The NBC report is tending toward white panic pornography. "Stay in your homes, that's what law enforcement wants you to do. Lock your doors right now."
This is the scene as a correspondent is describing "protestors throwing water bottles at police" - rubber bullets, tear gas, lots of screaming
The crowd is standing its ground here. And Garcetti is returning to the air now.
Garcetti: This is no longer protest. This is destruction. This is vandalism... Not just of police vehicles, but of businesses that is so hard hit.
Out goes a the citywide Public Safety Alert to all cellphones subscribed to emergency alerts and on the emergency broadcast network.
Garcetti: If you are out past 8PM tonight it is because you are looking for trouble.
Garcetti, asked if LAPD and LAFD have the wherewithal to handle this situation or if they possibly will ask for national guard to come in: Anything is possible, I am talking to the Governor in about ten minutes.
For about the hundredth time, an anchor asks if the people who are vandalizing or breaking store windows are "from out of town." To Garcetti's credit, he has not bit thus far and continues not to here.
Garcetti: Officers have shown remarkable restraint. Protestors have launched "iron, bricks, concrete" at them. "Officers who were not there in Minneapolis."
He doesn't appear to get it, as much as he intends to give the impression that he does.
He doesn't appear to get it, as much as he intends to give the impression that he does.
Garcetti: "To take an entire class of people [he's talking about cops] and say that they're bad is exactly repeating the mistakes that this country has made too often."
This is the "blue lives matter" ideology that the mayor is restating.
This is the "blue lives matter" ideology that the mayor is restating.
And, even on face value, a bafflingly simplistic articulation of what racism is. Like pre-K level.
Mayor Garcetti has left to talk to Governor Newsom with LAPD Chief Moore regarding (interpreting his last few comments) the state on the ground and possible deployment of national guard
Garcetti indicated that National Guard might not be able to be raised until tomorrow regardless.
Correspondent on the ground says Sheriff's Deputies have joined LAPD at at least one of the skirmish locations
Anchor: Do you see any decrease in the number of protestors?
Pilot: No, the numbers have continued to grow
Pilot: No, the numbers have continued to grow
With 25 minutes before curfew, Mayor Lester Friedman of Beverly Hills comes on air.
Friedman is being asked to pontificate about the civic heart of his city, Rodeo Drive: There were "breaches" and broken windows, he believes the area is secured and he doesn't have statistics on what might have been taken.
Unlike Koretz and Garcetti (although it may have changed by now), Friedman says Beverly Hills will have "strict enforcement" of its lockdown.
Mayor Friedman says that the westside is calling in for reinforcements from municipal law enforcement agencies in the Inland Empire.
Curfew was announced a little over an hour ago. If you are an "essential" worker trying to get home, Metro is not an option. https://twitter.com/metrolosangeles/status/1266930446379528192?s=20
