Protest live updates: Political shift spells cuts for the LAPD

After a week of protests across the state against police brutality and racial injustice, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday called for new restrictions on crowd control techniques and the use of force by law enforcement, including a ban on so-called “carotid holds,” after George Floyd was killed while in the custody of Minneapolis police.

Newsom said the controversial technique, a restraint that puts pressure to the sides of a person’s neck to restrict blood flow and can render the person unconscious, should be barred from the state police training program, adding that he will work with state lawmakers to ban the practice among law enforcement agencies statewide.

Read more >>>

City workers and activists paint the words Black Lives Matter in enormous bright yellow letters on the street leading to the White House on Friday.

(Associated Press)

WASHINGTON — City workers and volunteers painted the words Black Lives Matter in enormous bright yellow letters on the street leading to the White House, a highly visible sign of the District of Columbia’s embrace of a protest movement that has put it at odds with President Donald Trump.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser tweeted aerial video of the mural shortly after it was completed Friday. The letters and an image of the city’s flag stretch across 16th Street for two blocks, ending just before the church where Trump staged a photo-op after federal officers forcibly cleared a peaceful demonstration to make way for the president and his entourage.

“The section of 16th street in front of the White House is now officially ‘Black Lives Matter Plaza,’” Bowser tweeted. A sign was put up to mark the change.

Read More >>>

Police officers applying pressure to a person’s neck during an arrest has been a controversial technique for decades.

The Los Angeles Police Commission severely restricted the use of carotid neck holds in 1982 after the deaths of a dozen black men and then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates’ notorious comment that African Americans were dying because the “veins or arteries of blacks do not open up as fast as they do in normal people.”

Other law enforcement agencies continued to allow the holds with fewer restrictions.

The carotid hold is markedly different from the method of restraint used by a Minneapolis police officer seen kneeling on George Floyd’s neck in a videotaped recording that has set off mass protests across the country against police excessive force and racism.

But Floyd’s death prompted the city of Minneapolis to agree Friday to ban the use of all choke holds, including neck restraints, as part of a settlement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. The move follows a string of announcements this week by law enforcement agencies — including more than a dozen in California — ending the use of carotid neck restraints.

Read More >>>

As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Orange County topped 6,700 this week, officials said they were worried about the spread of the virus at large protests against police brutality against black people.

“Is it a concern? Absolutely. Do we respect their right to protest? Certainly,” Orange County Executive Officer Frank Kim said at a news conference Thursday. “We would hope that they would do so and use as much caution and safety protocols as reasonably possible.”

Read More >>>

Recent protests galvanized many to take to the streets championing a cause, but for many others in this election year, activism will happen at home.

And activists for a variety of candidates and issues are urging people — whether they broke quarantine to hit the streets or still haven’t left the house — that now is the time to act.

“Sitting around watching the news all day and people dying and police harming African Americans and COVID-19 killing people, it’s heartbreaking. But if you get involved with other people, you can find a way to at least be a small drop in that bucket that makes a positive difference,” said Gina Fields, chairperson of the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council, representing the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area.

“The best way to feel better about the world is to get out and help.”

Read More >>>

For black clergy across the United States, the last 10 days have been a tumultuous test of their stamina and skills.

For weeks, they had been striving to comfort their congregations amid a pandemic taking a disproportionately heavy toll on African Americans. Then came a coast-to-coast upsurge of racial tension and unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd, the Minneapolis black man who died after a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck as he pleaded for air.

“We’ve got a coronavirus and a racism virus,” said the Rev. Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.

Here’s a look at what McKissic and three other black clergymen have been doing and how they’ve been coping.

Read More >>>

Protesters pray together at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The city lifted a curfew after several days with no reports of looting.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

With curfews lifted, Los Angeles and other Southern California cities saw largely peaceful protests Thursday night as demonstrations continued with few reports of any problems.

Local protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd continue to grow, spreading from the streets of L.A. into suburbs like Fountain Valley, Irvine and Santa Clarita. At least a dozen new demonstrations are planned for Friday.

Police said they needed a curfew earlier this week in various cities and across Los Angeles County to control crowds and crack down on some looting that occurred in a few spots, including downtown, Van Nuys, Hollywood, Long Beach, Santa Monica and the Fairfax district. But there have not been any major reports of stealing in several days.

Read More >>>

After a looter hit the Hollywood restaurant Los Balcones del Peru during a wave of protests against police brutality on Saturday night, owner Jorge Rodriguez counted himself lucky enough to laugh about it.

“He grabbed the most expensive wines we had and took off,” Rodriguez said, adding that the man left the restaurant otherwise untouched. “It looks like he had a taste for red wines. He didn’t touch the whites.”

Rodriguez maintains a grim sense of humor even as he struggles to keep his business on life support.

Read more >>>

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Jaguars held their own protest Friday against inequality and police brutality, marching from their stadium to the steps of the local sheriff’s department.

“Today we say no more,” wide receiver Chris Conley said. “Today we see a nation that can’t await change, a city that won’t sit still or be quiet.”

Read More >>>

Ibram X. Kendi, 38, is one the country’s leading proponents of antiracism. He is the founding director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University in Washington and a contributor for the Atlantic and CBS News. He has written five books, including “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” which won a 2016 National Book Award, and “How to Be an Antiracist,” which is enjoying renewed popularity in this national moment of antiracist protest.

Kendi’s fifth book, out this month, is a departure only in its target audience — which is, to be sure, radically different. “Antiracist Baby” is a colorful board book for the 0-3 demographic, aimed to educate people about race and racism as early in life as possible. While Kendi himself expresses a measured but inexhaustible hope for social change, he believes it has to be seeded by new generations if we are to truly become a more just country. He spoke to us by phone from his home in Washington, D.C.

Read More >>>

NEW YORK — The latest night of protests in New York City sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police was markedly calmer, while video of police officers in Buffalo pushing an elderly protester who falls and cracks his head drew widespread condemnation.

Video from WFBO-TV showed Buffalo officers pushing the 75-year-old man who walked up to police who were clearing Niagara Square around the 8 p.m. curfew Thursday. The man falls straight backward and hits his head on the pavement, with blood leaking out as officers walk past.

The video quickly went viral on social media, spurring outrage. Buffalo police initially said in a statement that a person “was injured when he tripped & fell,” WIVB-TV reported, but Capt. Jeff Rinaldo later told the TV station that an internal affairs investigation was opened. The police commissioner subsequently suspended two police officers without pay, Mayor Byron Brown said in a statement.

Read More >>>

Widespread protests provoked by the death of George Floyd have swept the nation this week, but some activists, like the L.A.-based writer Cate Young, want to use this opportunity to spotlight other cases, too.

On Tuesday, Young launched a campaign to demand justice for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was shot in her Louisville, Ky., apartment by a police officer in March.

Frustrated by the lack of media and political attention on black women such as Taylor who have died at the hands of police, Young seeks to bring her story back into the news cycle.

“If I were to be a victim of this kind of crime, I would be quickly forgotten,” said Young, a black woman and self-described feminist. “Someone needed to champion her cause as well.”

Read More >>>

WASHINGTON — Maine’s Democratic governor is urging President Trump to watch his tone during a visit to the state Friday to showcase a company that makes specialized swabs for coronavirus testing.

And the sheriff in Maine’s most rural county is urging those expected to protest Trump’s visit — and those who support him — to behave themselves as demonstrations continue around the country over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.

Trump has drawn criticism for urging governors to “dominate” protesters and toss perpetrators of violence in prison and for his administration’s move earlier this week to forcibly clear out peaceful protesters near the White House so he could walk to a nearby church to pose for photos holding up a Bible.

Gov. Janet Mills this week urged the president to “check the rhetoric at the door and abandon the divisive words” during his visit.

“I hope he will heed this call and appeal to the best in all people and lead us with courage and compassion through this difficult time,” she said Thursday.

During a call earlier this week with governors, Mills told the president she was concerned about “security problems for our state” if Trump visited because of his harsh remarks about handling demonstrators.

Read more > > >

The young man flanked the shattered entry of a ransacked CVS in Santa Monica, where people had swept the shelves clean of everything from diapers to detergent. The man, who did not cover his face, admitted he was a looter. He did not apologize.

“We’ve got no other way of showing people how angry we are,” he said.

Out of the store ran another young man, this one holding a carton of eggs. He grabbed a friend and started scanning the street for targets: police cars. “We’re doing it because we can,” he said.

Over in Van Nuys, a teenage boy standing outside a ravaged Skechers store held up a backpack. That was all he took. But it was enough, he said.

“We are just trying to provide and take up the opportunity that we are getting right now. That’s all.”

Read more > > >

The same outrage over racial injustice that ignited rioting in South Los Angeles in 1992 has propelled a week of protests across Los Angeles in the wake of George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.

In 1991, a black man — Rodney King — was beaten by police; four white officers were acquitted the next year. The anger and frustration left businesses burned and looted in South L.A. as well as in Koreatown, where tensions had already been stoked by the light sentence given to a Korean merchant for fatally shooting a black teenage girl the merchant had accused of shoplifting. Physical and emotional scars of that devastation remain.

The difference in 2020 is that there appear to have been no big demonstrations in South Los Angeles, where the reality of police violence against people of color is all too well known. Instead, protesters have taken their anguished cries into affluent neighborhoods across the city, where residents live at a comfortable detachment from police violence.

Peaceful protesters — and it is crucial to distinguish them and their organizers from the violent opportunists who occasionally traveled in their wake — demonstrated in Hollywood, West Hollywood, and the Fairfax district, and moved west to the ocean for a demonstration in Santa Monica. There have been protests in Westwood and Brentwood, in Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley. A thousand people demonstrated at the pier in Manhattan Beach, and hundreds marched in Newport Beach.

They have massed downtown outside the government offices of L.A. city and county power brokers and in Windsor Square at the official residence of L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, where they chanted “defund the police.” Ethnically diverse and unflinching at a time when police or a virus could take them down, they have stood on streets, sidewalks and lawns to make the point that racial inequity must stop.

Read more > > >

It has been an article of faith in Los Angeles politics for more than a quarter-century: Build the Police Department and its budget, and you will build a stronger, safer city.

Mayors from moderate Republican Richard Riordan to liberal Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa charted that course, with special emphasis on expanding the LAPD to at least 10,000 sworn officers.

But city leaders now appear ready to slow and perhaps reverse that longtime trend, following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody and a wave of rage, sorrow and demands in Los Angeles that the government provide poor and minority communities with more than a police presence.

Mayor Eric Garcetti said he will direct $250 million to youth jobs, health initiatives and “peace centers” to heal trauma, and will allow those who have suffered discrimination to collect damages. The money will have to be cut from other city operations; Garcetti, backed by City Council President Nury Martinez and his new Police Commission president, said as much as $150 million would come from the Los Angeles Police Department.

That is a striking reversal from the budget Garcetti put forward in April, which proposed a 7% spending increase for the LAPD, including a previously agreed-upon package of raises and bonuses for rank-and-file officers.

Read more > > >

Planned protests in Paris and Sydney, Australia, against police brutality and discrimination have been banned out of concerns over the spread of the coronavirus.

Police banned the protest planned in Paris on Saturday because of health measures restricting gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic. The demonstration against systemic racism and for justice for George Floyd and other victims of police brutality was to take place outside the U.S. Embassy.

Police Prefect Didier Lallement said Friday such protests “are not authorized” because virus safety measures “prohibit any gathering, in the public space, of more than 10 people.” He issued an order banning the Floyd demonstration and another protest planned for the same day.

Meanwhile, in Australia, a court sided with police in ruling Friday that a Black Lives Matter protest planned for Sydney poses too much risk for spreading the coronavirus and cannot be held.

Thousands of people were expected to rally in Australia’s largest city on Saturday afternoon to honor Floyd and to protest against the deaths of indigenous Australians in custody.

But New South Wales state Supreme Court Justice Des Fagan ruled that the rally was not an authorized public assembly. Fagan said he understood the rally was designed to coincide with similar events in other countries.

“I don’t diminish the importance of the issues and no one would deny them in normal circumstances,” he said. “No one denies them that, but we’re talking about a situation of a health crisis.”

In Sydney, outdoor gatherings are restricted to 10 people, while up to 50 people can go to funerals, places of worship, restaurants, pubs and cafes.

MINNEAPOLIS — When Medaria Arradondo was tapped to lead the Minneapolis Police Department in 2017, he faced a public that was newly outraged by the fatal police shooting of a woman who had called 911 and that was still carrying deep mistrust from the killing of a black man two years earlier.

Many hoped Arradondo, the city’s first African American police chief, could change the culture of a department that critics said too frequently used excessive force and discriminated against people of color. He spoke of restoring trust during a swearing-in ceremony that became a community celebration featuring song, dance and prayer in a center close to where he grew up.

But George Floyd’s death, which ignited nationwide protests over racial injustice and police brutality, has raised questions about whether Arradondo — or any chief — can fix the department now facing a civil rights investigation.

Steve Belton, president and CEO of the Urban League of the Twin Cities, said Arradondo inherited a department with a history of misconduct “over many, many, many decades” and “it won’t be fixed overnight, maybe not even in this particular moment or with this particular chief. Change takes time.”

Read more > > >

Twitter has blocked a Trump campaign video tribute to George Floyd over a copyright claim, in a move that adds to tensions between the social media platform and the president, one of its most widely followed users.

The company put a label on a video posted by the @TeamTrump account that said, “This media has been disabled in response to a claim by the copyright owner.” The video was still up on Trump’s YouTube channel and includes pictures of Floyd, whose death sparked widespread protests, at the start.

“Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives,” Twitter said in a statement.

The 3-minute, 45-second clip is a montage of photos and videos of peaceful marches and police officers hugging protesters interspersed with some scenes of burning buildings and vandalism, set to gentle piano music and Trump speaking.

It’s the latest action that Twitter has taken against Trump, who has threatened to retaliate against social media companies.

WASHINGTON — The death of George Floyd in police hands has pushed the U.S. military to look hard at itself and to admit that, like the rest of America, it has fallen short on racial fairness.

Although the military historically has prided itself on diversity, leaders acknowledge that African American troops often are disproportionately subject to military legal punishment and are impeded in promotions.

“I struggle with the Air Force’s own demons that include the racial disparities in military justice and discipline among our youngest black male airmen,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Kaleth O. Wright, an African American and the service’s top enlisted airman, wrote in a social media post this week.

While tensions simmer between the Pentagon and the White House over the proper limits of military involvement in policing protests prompted by Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, what goes largely unspoken is that many of the troops being called upon to help keep order are African Americans and other minorities.

Read more > > >

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Statues of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln tower over visitors to Kentucky’s Capitol, but the state’s governor doesn’t think the Confederate president belongs in the same space as the U.S. president who helped end slavery.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday that he sees the Davis statue as a divisive symbol that should be removed from the Capitol rotunda in Frankfort. His comments came hard on the heels of an announcement by Virginia’s governor that a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee near downtown Richmond would be taken down.

Beshear was asked about the Davis statue during a time of unrest in Louisville, Ky., where crowds have protested over police interactions with black residents. In March, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman, was killed by gunfire when police broke into her apartment on an unsuccessful drug raid.

“Even if there are those who think it’s a part of history, there should be a better place to put it in historic context,” the governor said of the Davis statue. “And right now, seeing so much pain in our state and across our country, can’t we at least realize that in so many of our fellow Kentuckians ... it is in the very least so hurtful to them? And doesn’t that at least justify it not sitting where it does right now?

“I don’t think it should be in the Capitol rotunda,” he added.

Read more > > >

LE PECQ, France — Three days after George Floyd died with a Minneapolis police officer choking off his air, another black man writhed on the tarmac of a street in Paris as a police officer pressed a knee to his neck during an arrest.

Immobilization techniques where officers apply pressure with their knees on prone suspects are used in policing around the world and have long drawn criticism. One reason why Floyd’s death is sparking anger and touching nerves globally is that such techniques have been blamed for asphyxiations and other deaths in police custody beyond American shores, often involving non-white suspects.

“We cannot say that the American situation is foreign to us,” said French lawmaker Francois Ruffin, who has pushed for a ban on the police use of face-down holds that are implicated in multiple deaths in France, a parliamentary effort put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.

The muscular May 28 arrest in Paris of a black man who was momentarily immobilized face-up with an officer’s knee and upper shin pressing down on his jaw, neck and upper chest is among those that have drawn angry comparisons with the death of Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis.

Read more > > >

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City is reforming police procedures after criticism from black organizations about police conduct during nearly a week of protests as well as long-standing tension between the department and minorities, the mayor announced Thursday.

A coalition of civil rights organizations demanded Wednesday that Police Chief Rick Smith be fired. But Mayor Quinton Lucas said Smith would remain “as we weather our current crisis and also as we continue to address our issues related to violent crime and the high number of homicides in Kansas City.”

Lucas said after a closed meeting of the Kansas City Police Board of Commissioners that the city would ask an outside agency to review all police-involved shootings; create whistleblower protections for officers; end a department policy of not sending probable-cause statements to prosecutors in officer-involved shootings; review officers’ use of tear gas and projectiles; and provide updates to the city council on the department’s community engagement efforts.

Lucas said he hoped a review of tear gas and projectile use would lead to a new policy in the near future.

The city announced Wednesday that $2.5 million in private funding has been donated to buy police body cameras.

Lucas said the changes addressed long-standing issues, not only concerns raised during the protests over the death of George Floyd.

“It also recognizes that this moment is not about individual protests on the plaza or in Kansas City,” Lucas said. “But instead how we can modernize policing, how we can build trust between police and our communities and, frankly, how we can help solve many of the challenges we have in Kansas City’s violent crime.”

The announcement came shortly after Jackson County’s prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker, said she was reaching out to Kansas City protesters claiming to be victims of police misconduct, urging them to report their allegations online.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A police commissioner has suspended two officers following video that shows a Buffalo officer appearing to shove a man who walked up to police.

Video from WBFO shows the man appearing to hit his head on the pavement, with blood leaking out as officers walk past to clear Niagara Square on Thursday night.

The station reports two medics treated the unidentified man.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the man is 75 and hospitalized in serious condition. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo condemned the incident as “wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful.”

WIVB-TV reports that Buffalo police initially said in a statement a person “was injured when he tripped & fell.” But Capt. Jeff Rinaldo later told the TV station that an internal affairs investigation was opened.

Later Thursday, news outlets reported that Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood suspended two officers without pay.

New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office has tweeted that they’re aware of the video.

At the end of his shift at a Home Depot warehouse in Joliet, Ill., Elgin Hodges drove home about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, splashes of blue and red light from police cars illuminating his way.

Joliet’s mayor had declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. in response to unrest that broke out over the death of George Floyd.

Hodges checked that he was obeying the speed limit, scanned the street and shadowy parking lots for officers and nervously adjusted the paperwork he keeps on the dashboard detailing his status as an essential worker during the pandemic.

In recent days, many workers in cities with curfews have struggled to make their early-morning shifts or get home late at night. They’ve had to contend with public transportation shutdowns, suspensions of service by ride-hailing companies and police blocking off roads and exits.

Some employees saw their wages cut as businesses shortened hours in response. Others were forced to forego wages as they called off shifts in the face of travel impediments or safety worries, or left early to be able to get home before the start of curfew.

Hodges, who is black, worried the curfew would make him a target for police harassment.

“Growing up I’ve been taught to keep my head on a swivel. But now I’ve been working double time to ensure my safety,” he said.

Many cities and counties have relaxed or lifted their curfews, including Los Angeles, where the Sheriff’s Department said Thursday it would not impose restrictions, although it said individual cities were free to maintain their own.

In Joliet, where Hodges lives, the curfew, pushed back to 10 p.m., remained in place as of Thursday night. Every night since Monday, Hodges has taken backstreets to avoid the main streets crowded with police, adding about 10 minutes to his usual 20-minute commute.

Read More > > >

Funeral directors remove George Floyd’s casket from a memorial service on June 4.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

MINNEAPOLIS — Outside the small university chapel, crowds gathered and chanted: “What’s his name? George Floyd!”

Inside, his youngest brother, Rodney Floyd, stepped to a white lectern above a black-and-gold casket.

He had a request for the mourners: “Can y’all please say his name?”

And they answered: “George Floyd.”

The private memorial in downtown Minneapolis was reserved for relatives and friends and the civil rights activists, politicians and celebrities the family had invited.

In the 10 days since George Floyd died with a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck and onlookers recording on their smartphones, his name has become a rallying cry in a nationwide movement against racism and police violence.

“He was powerful man,” Philonise Floyd, another brother, said of his 6-foot-7-inch sibling. “He had a way with words” that motivated people.

“All these people came to see my brother,” he said. “Everybody wants justice. We want justice for George. He’s going to get it.”

Read More > > >

Florida State football players and coaches ironed out their issues Thursday after players threatened a boycott over coach Mike Norvell’s comments in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and the unrest that has followed.

On Tuesday, the Athletic’s Tashan Reed tweeted a quote from Norvell in which the first-year Seminoles coach said there had been “a lot of open communication” between the players and coaches and that he had “back and forth individually with every player this weekend” to discuss the recent events.

“And that was something that was important to me because this is a heartbreaking time in our country,” Norvell said, according to Reed.

Read more >>>

Even before the Los Angeles riots in 1992, many at City Hall believed that the Los Angeles Police Department was too small to effectively patrol such a sprawling city. They noted that L.A. had fewer cops per capita than some other cities and that L.A.’s huge geography caused its own unique challenges.

So, for more than two decades, L.A. pushed to expand the department. The magic number was 10,000 officers. And in 2013, L.A. hit that number.

But by then, there were voices at City Hall questioning whether more expansion was needed and whether it might be time to trim the LAPD’s budget to preserve other city programs during tough economic times. Some also noted the huge drop in crime during that period, a dramatic difference from the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Read more >>>

Using tear gas or pepper spray to subdue protesters will only help spread the coronavirus in the middle of a pandemic, infectious disease experts warn, urging law enforcement to abandon the practice for public health reasons.

Spraying people with tear gas causes them to cough, shout and scream — and that will send infectious droplets from an infected person to others, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine and an infectious diseases specialist at UC San Francisco.

Read more >>>

Drew Brees apologized Thursday for comments that were “insensitive and completely missed the mark” when he reiterated his opposition to Colin Kaepernick and others kneeling during the national anthem, drawing sharp criticism from fellow high-profile athletes and others in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Los Angeles Lakers great LeBron James, New Orleans Saints safety Malcolm Jenkins and former NFL player Martellus Bennett were just some of the high-profile athletes to criticize Brees on their Twitter feeds.

Read more >>>

San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore has requested the help of the California National Guard to support police in La Mesa and deputies around the county amid continuing protests calling for racial justice and police reform, according to sheriff’s officials.

“San Diego County has requested the National Guard [to] assist with security in the region due to the recent civil unrest,” La Mesa city officials said in a statement Wednesday night. “A portion of them will be responding to La Mesa this evening. You may also see them throughout the county.”

Read more >>>

MINNEAPOLIS — All protest movements have slogans. The one sparked by George Floyd’s death has a number: 8:46.

Eight minutes, 46 seconds is the length of time that prosecutors say Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was pinned to the ground, gasping for breath, under a white Minneapolis police officer’s knee before he died last week.

In the days since, outraged protesters, allies and sympathetic companies have seized on the detail as a quiet way to honor Floyd at a time of angry and sometimes violent clashes with police. Even as prosecutors have said little about how they arrived at the precise number, it has fast grown into a potent symbol of the suffering Floyd — and many other black men — have experienced at the hands of police.

In Boston and Tacoma, Wash., demonstrators this week lay down on streets, staging “die-ins” for precisely 8 minutes, 46 seconds. In Houston, where Floyd had lived for part of his life, churchgoers held candles and bowed their heads in silence, experiencing the crawl of time.

ViacomCBS, owner of MTV and Nickelodeon, stopped its programming earlier this week to air a silent, somber video honoring Floyd for 8 minutes, 46 seconds.

Read more >>>

Massive protests across the nation have sparked fears of a second wave of coronavirus cases as thousands of demonstrators gather close together, yelling and holding hands, all of which could amplify the transmission of the deadly virus.

But another problem has emerged in the past week that could also exacerbate the spread of COVID-19 in Los Angeles County: less testing.

Half of the approximately 40 government-run testing sites throughout the county have been shut down at some point since Saturday. On Wednesday, 15 were either still closed or operating with reduced hours due to remaining safety concerns or curfews, officials said.

It is unclear how much testing will drop due to the closures, but experts say that any reduction will hurt the region’s response to the virus. It will also heighten the dangers created by protesting as well as the reopenings of certain businesses that began last week, they said.

“Why did we stop doing this? We’re in the middle of a pandemic,” said Claire Garrido-Ortega, an epidemiology lecturer at Cal State Long Beach.

Read more >>>

Dressed in a black tank top and black shorts that stretched down to his shins, Orlando Fuentes stood in front of a boarded-up T-shirt store at the Anaheim Towne Center on Monday night. About 30 other people and a pit bull named Daisy were with him.

Everyone looked like they were ready to throw down.

Earlier that day, over 1,000 people had peacefully marched past the downtown shopping plaza to decry police brutality. Now, it was two hours past curfew.

Nearby, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department SWAT armored vehicle stuffed with deputies warned anyone within hearing distance to leave. Illegal fireworks crackled in the distance. Police raced around town to pursue stragglers; deputies guarded other businesses.

But Fuentes and his homies weren’t going anywhere.

“I’ve been coming to this store since I was a kid,” explained the 30-year-old. “And no way are we going to let outsiders mess with it. We’re going to stay here all night if we have to.”

Read more > > >

A racist civic sculpture celebrating white supremacy was taken down off its pedestal on Tuesday in Alexandria, Va. The action, dramatic and long overdue, represents a sliver of light piercing the current gloom.

The bronze figure of a lone Confederate soldier, positioned to face due south, had stood for 131 years in the city’s historic core, just seven short miles from the White House and eight from the U.S. Capitol dome. Beneath the now-banished statue, an inscription on the base declares: “They died in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed.”

Consciousness. Duty. Faith. This civic salute to a gross perversion of human decency could hardly be more unashamed.

Memorial sculptures like this one have a specific purpose. They cast institutional racism in bronze.

Read more > > >

In the broad sweep of American history, certain years stand like grim mileposts. The year 1968, bathed in blood and drenched in sorrow, is one. The year 2020 may be another.

The nation is convulsed today in a way it has not been in more than half a century: stalked by a mysterious virus, burdened by soaring joblessness, wrestling — once again — with the twin plagues of racism and inequality that have poisoned the country from its outset.

As it happens, 1968 was a presidential election year. So, too, is 2020. It is the time when Americans take stock of what has been and look forward, with varying degrees of hope and resignation, to what may be.

So much has changed in 52 years. So much remains the same.

Read more > > >

George Floyd, Jamar Clark, Philando Castile. Reading the names of African Americans killed by police in or near Minneapolis alone can boggle the mind, and of course these are only the names that made the national news. Like high-profile police killings in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Texas, the Southeast, the Northwest, the East Coast — the manner of killing and the justifications offered vary, as do the consequences for the officers involved. But one common thread running through the many deadly incidents is that the victims are disproportionately black.

Floyd’s life was snuffed out on May 25 as a police officer pinned him on the street for nearly nine minutes, the officer’s knee on the victim’s neck as Floyd protested, “I can’t breathe.”

Clark was pinned to the ground by a knee to his chest in 2015 when a Minneapolis police officer shot him to death.

Castile was shot dead in his car in 2016 by a police officer in a suburban community outside Minneapolis.

Other cities, other police killings. On May 6, Indianapolis police killed Dreasjon “Sean” Reed. On March 13, Louisville, Ky., police killed Breonna Taylor as she lay in her own bed. On Feb. 23, former Glynn County, Ga., Police Officer Gregory McMichael helped corner Ahmaud Arbery in an incident that ended with Arbery shot dead.

Read more > > >

In one video, at least eight Los Angeles police officers surround a woman lying in a Hollywood street as the buzz of a Taser fills the air. People scream from apartment balconies for the officers, who appear to be firing the stun gun at the woman, to stop.

In another video, an LAPD vehicle barrels into a crowd of protesters in Pershing Square, nearly driving over one before backing up and speeding away as protesters throw objects at the car.

On Tuesday, footage of a curfew arrest in Hollywood ends with the unarmed arrestee held at gunpoint and pleading for mercy as a police radio squawks with orders for officers to take anyone they see into custody. In L.A. County, sheriff’s deputies in one video appear to shoot pellets out of a moving vehicle at young men on the street, and those in another video punch and knee a young man on the ground in Compton.

With cellphone cameras everywhere and social media providing a livestream of unprecedented protests against police brutality, there has been a steady stream of new videos showing troubling police behavior.

Read more > > >

It started with the global pandemic that made in-person gatherings a health risk. Now, with protests against police violence and racial oppression sweeping the world, LGBTQ leaders are urging their communities to express solidarity and support, whether in person or online.

“We don’t make space for the reality that black queer people exist,” said David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, an organization that serves the needs of the African American LGBTQ community in the United States. “Everybody should be really clear about [Pride’s] origins in resistance and rebellion. Pride has more to do with what people are calling protests than [it does] with the parades that ignore all of these realities.”

In recent years, most Pride celebrations have been joyous, with parades, dance music, parties, crowded bars and corporate-sponsored rainbow swag. It’s a stark change from the attitudes at the first Pride marches, said Michael Bronski, author of “A Queer History of the United States” and professor of the practice in media and activism in studies of women, gender and sexuality at Harvard University.

“The first march in 1970, they were anchored in anger,” Bronski said. “This was really a political march. There were no corporate sponsors. Nobody had signs on buses and trains with rainbow flags for Levi or Subaru. … The first gay pride march and Stonewall was a recognition that gay men and lesbians were in fact oppressed by a larger society.”

Read more > > >

SACRAMENTO — With the National Guard carrying live ammunition and two nights of looting leaving the city on edge, no one was sure what would happen here Monday as darkness fell downtown — not police blaring reminders of a curfew from an unmarked car, not the city leaders and business people who had long since cleared out of the area, and not the protesters themselves, many seemingly young and inexperienced with civil disobedience.

Then a slight man, decked out in a tapered black suit, lace up loafers and a wide brim hat, stepped up as mobocracy crept in with the evening.

Stevante Clark, brother of Stephon Clark, gunned down by Sacramento police in 2018, took hold of the only small bullhorn anyone had thought to bring, and with it, took hold of the crowd of about 600.

“If you disrespect the legacy of George Floyd, you are disrespecting the legacy of my brother,” he yelled, his voice strained to a whisper from earlier protests. “And I will not allow that.”

Clark, 27, is emerging as the leader of a particular moment in Sacramento, able to clearly convey and share emotionally the salt-in-the-wound agony of police violence that has defined his life since his unarmed brother was killed in his grandmother’s backyard — a bellwether of grief for a young generation already tired of hurting and desperately in need of hope from someone who feels authentic.

But he is an unlikely guide.

Read more > > >

MINNEAPOLIS — The city of Minneapolis says the looting and property damage following the death of George Floyd in police custody has caused at least $55 million in damage so far.

Vandals damaged or set fire to at least 220 buildings, but that number is expected to go up, city officials said.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey will ask for state and federal aid to help rebuild after the civil unrest. Until that happens, community members are pitching in to support Minneapolis neighborhoods.

The violence follows the death of Floyd, a black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, ignoring Floyd’s cries that he couldn’t breathe.

Prosecutors Wednesday upgraded charges against the officer, Derek Chauvin, to second-degree murder and charged three other officers with aiding and abetting.

Former actress Meghan Markle, the duchess of Sussex, has shared her sadness about racial divisions in the U.S., telling students at her alma mater in Los Angeles that she felt moved to speak out because the life of George Floyd mattered.

The wife of Britain’s Prince Harry told graduates at the Immaculate Heart High School that she wrestled with what to tell them given the days of protests after Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

“I realized the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing, because George Floyd’s life mattered,” she said in a virtual address.

Floyd, who was black, died after a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck May 25.

Days of protests have shaken L.A. and other cities in the U.S. Charges have been filed against the officers who were present when Floyd lay pinned to the ground for several minutes.

Read more > > >

WASHINGTON — Amid nationwide protests over police killings, the Supreme Court is facing pressure to reconsider the legal immunity that often shields officers from being sued for using excessive force, including brutal arrests and the shooting of innocent people in their homes.

The high court has been sharply criticized from the left and the right for rulings in the last decade that have made it nearly impossible for many victims of police brutality or wrongful shootings to sue the officers for violating their rights. Since police officers are rarely charged with a crime, the court-created doctrine of “qualified immunity” from civil lawsuits has meant no redress for victims and little accountability for those who abuse their authority, according to the critics.

In recent weeks, justices have been considering several appeals from victims urging the court to reverse course and allow these claims to go before a jury.

Lawyers behind the appeals say the images of a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee onto the neck of unarmed black man who is handcuffed and gasping for breath should weigh on the justices.

“It makes for grim coincidence,” said Jay Schweikert, a lawyer for the Cato Institute, which has waged a campaign against police immunity. “The senseless violence committed by [police officer] Derek Chauvin — and the stunning indifference of the officers standing by as George Floyd begged for his life— is the product of our culture of near-zero accountability for law enforcement. I expect the events of the past week will increase their sense of urgency, because the justices are culpable for this doctrine that they have expounded.”

Read more > > >

MINNEAPOLIS — Demonstrations in cities across the U.S. over the death of George Floyd remained large but turned notably more subdued on the eve of a Thursday memorial service and a series of events mourning the man whose death sparked a national movement.

The calmer protests came on the same day that prosecutors charged three more police officers and filed a new, tougher charge against the officer at the center of the case.

The most serious new charge Wednesday was an accusation of second-degree murder against Derek Chauvin, who was caught on video pressing his knee to Floyd’s neck. The three other officers at the scene were charged for the first time with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to four decades in prison.

The move by prosecutors punctuated an unprecedented week in modern U.S. history, in which largely peaceful protests took place in communities of all sizes but were rocked by bouts of violence, including deadly attacks on officers, rampant thefts and arson in some places.

Read more > > >

More huge protests against the death of George Floyd and local police violence spread across Southern California along with growing pressure to end curfews imposed over the weekend.

Police reported few problems Wednesday night, after dealing with scattered looting and vandalism Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Officials pushed back curfews later into the evening amid pressure to lift them all together.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said that while the curfews may have been warranted on Sunday and Monday nights, “now it seems like they are being used to arrest peaceful protesters. I don’t think they are needed anymore.” Mayor Eric Garcetti said the curfew could be lifted if things remain quiet Wednesday night.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against Los Angeles city and county and the city of San Bernardino to end the curfews.

“The curfews’ extraordinary suppression of all political protest in the evening hours plainly violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and their blanket restrictions on movement outside working hours violate the Constitution’s protection of freedom of movement,” the ACLU said in a statement.

Read more > > >

WASHINGTON — In August 2007, Melissa Borton was returning to her Minneapolis home to unpack groceries after a trip to Rainbow Foods with her 2-month-old child and 5-year-old German shepherd.

As the then-30-year-old turned her green minivan left into an intersection, she saw flashing blue and red lights behind her. She was confused. She didn’t think she had disobeyed any laws.

Borton stopped her van and rolled down her window in anticipation of interacting with the two approaching policemen. One was Derek Chauvin, the officer who would be charged this month with manslaughter and second-degree murder for the killing of George Floyd, which sparked national outrage and protests against systemic racism.

Chauvin and an unnamed officer “without a word” reached inside her car, unlocked the door and began pulling her out while she was still strapped in, Borton recalled in an interview with The Times.

Read more > > >

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Three men charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia face a hearing to determine whether authorities have enough evidence to send the case to a trial court.

The hearing Thursday follows a week of angry protests in the U.S. over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Defense attorneys requested the proceeding to make prosecutors show whether they have probable cause to charge the men with murder.

Arbery was killed Feb. 23 after a white father and son armed themselves and gave chase when they spotted the 25-year-old black man running in their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick.

It wasn’t until May 7 that those men — Greg McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34 — were charged with felony murder and aggravated assault. The McMichaels’ arrests came two days after cellphone video of the shooting leaked online and stirred a national outcry.

The neighbor who filmed the video, 50-year-old William “Roddie” Bryan, was also arrested and charged with felony murder and illegally using a vehicle to try to confine and detain Arbery.

Read more > > >

PORTLAND, Ore. — This liberal city is so well-known — and usually prepared — for messy protests that it was once famously nicknamed “Little Beirut.” But even it is reeling from the nightly unrest splintering off from peaceful demonstrations over police killings of African Americans.

For five nights, these smaller breakaway groups have smashed windows, set fires, broken into a building housing police headquarters and spray-painted walls and sidewalks. The mayhem is not unique to Portland during the national upheaval over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but the sustained demonstrations have pushed police to the brink — unusual for a city well-versed in civil disobedience.

A visibly frustrated Portland Police Chief Jami Resch pleaded Wednesday for people to help stop those “holding our city with violence.” More than 10,000 people had demonstrated peacefully in the city the day before — one of the largest protests in the U.S. on Tuesday — before violence broke out after nightfall.

“How do we come together to stop the violence and destruction in our city so we can move forward to identify solutions that can work? How long can we, as a city, endure the extreme disregard for human life and property demonstrated by a small group of individuals?” Resch said at an emotional news conference Wednesday. “We have to collectively come together to stop those who are holding our city with violence. ... Every night, we are using all our resources, and it is still not enough.”

Police say they have struggled to balance allowing thousands of peaceful protesters to march while confronting much smaller crowds that seem focused on clashing with officers at any cost.

Read more > > >

More than 10,000 people have been arrested in protests decrying racism and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death, according to an Associated Press tally of known arrests across the U.S.

The count has grown by the hundreds each day as protesters spilled into the streets and encountered a heavy police presence and curfews that give law enforcement stepped-up arrest powers.

Los Angeles has had more than a quarter of the national arrests, followed by New York, Dallas and Philadelphia. Many of the arrests have been for low-level offenses such as curfew violations and failure to disperse. Hundreds were arrested on burglary and looting charges.

As cities were engulfed in unrest last week, politicians claimed that the majority of the protesters were outside agitators, including a contention by Minnesota’s governor that 80% of the participants in the demonstrations were from out of state.

The arrests in Minneapolis during a frenzied weekend tell a different story. In a nearly 24-hour period from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon, 41 of the 52 people cited with protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses, according to the Hennepin County sheriff.

In the nation’s capital, 86% of the more than 400 people arrested as of Wednesday afternoon were from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

It is not known how many of the people arrested were locked up — an issue at a time when many of the nation’s jails are dealing with coronavirus outbreaks. The protesters are often placed in zip-ties and hauled away from the scene in buses.

NEW YORK — A New York police officer on an anti-looting patrol was ambushed Wednesday by a man who walked up behind him and stabbed him in the neck, police said, setting off a struggle in which the assailant was shot and two other officers suffered gunshot injuries to their hands.

The bloodshed happened just before midnight in the hours after an 8 p.m. curfew that was intended to quell days of unrest over the death of George Floyd in Minnesota.

All three injured officers were expected to recover. The man who attacked them was shot multiple times and was hospitalized in critical condition, said Police Commissioner Dermot Shea.

Shea noted that it was one of several attacks on police officers in recent days, including one in which a driver plowed into a police sergeant who was trying to stop looting in the Bronx and a lieutenant who was struck in the helmet by a brick during a brawl with protesters in Manhattan.

The spot in Brooklyn where Wednesday night’s attack took place is just a block away from where demonstrators and police engaged days ago in an hours-long standoff, during which a police car was burned and protesters beaten with batons.

There were peaceful marches and protests throughout the day Wednesday, but police moved in to break them up when the city’s curfew took effect at 8 p.m.

SEATTLE — Leaders in Seattle seeking to address concerns raised by protesters have abruptly ended a citywide curfew in place for days amid massive demonstrations over the death of George Floyd.

Mayor Jenny Durkan said Wednesday evening on Twitter that she was ending the curfew, which had been scheduled to last until Saturday, after she and Police Chief Carmen Best met with community members.

“Chief Best believes we can balance public safety and ensure peaceful protests can continue without a curfew,” Durkan said. “For those peacefully demonstrating tonight, please know you can continue to demonstrate. We want you to continue making your voice heard.”

Thousands of protesters remained in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood well after the abolished 9 p.m. curfew Wednesday. Demonstrators carried “Black Lives Matter” signs, called for cutting the police department’s budget and shifting the money to social programs, and chanted for officers to remove their riot gear.

Washington Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib tweeted that he was pleased Seattle had listened and reversed course.

“Preemptive curfews were only making things worse. Other cities should do likewise,” he posted.

Demonstrators protest the death of George Floyd at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

WASHINGTON — Demonstrators marched to the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday night, protesting the death of George Floyd in Minnesota and demanding that laws be changed to prevent more like it.

Along their route from near the White House, there were troops in fatigues and officers from federal agencies keeping watch on the crowd. Barricades were put up around the Capitol, and the Capitol Police stood guard behind them.

“We came here because they make laws here and we want the laws to change,” said Mohammed Wagdy, 26, of nearby Prince George’s County.

As an 11 p.m. curfew in Washington neared, community activists urged the demonstrators to head home. Some did, but others said they were returning to the White House.

Moments after being told to leave the area within 30 minutes or face arrest, protesters held still and took a knee in front of Los Angeles City Hall.

Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, left, and Nneka Ogwumike celebrate during a victory over the Storm last season.

(Katharine Lotze / Getty Images)

Tierra Ruffin-Pratt knows the story too well. A black man is killed by a police officer. Outrage, anguish and sadness follow.

Whether it was Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, whose deaths in 2016 led the current Sparks forward to organize protests when she was with the Washington Mystics, or George Floyd, who died after a police officer pressed a knee to his neck for nearly nine minutes last month, Ruffin-Pratt is reminded of Julian Dawkins.

Her cousin.

Read More >>>

Several law enforcement agencies in San Diego — including the Sheriff’s Department — on Wednesday announced an immediate ban on the use of carotid restraint, a move that comes two days after San Diego police said they would no longer allow officers to use the controversial neck hold.

The county Sheriff’s Department, as well as police departments in Oceanside, Coronado and La Mesa — which was beset by riots sparked by police and racial injustices on Saturday — all announced they were making the policy change.

“In light of community concerns, and after consultation with many elected officials throughout the county, I am stopping the use of the carotid restraint by my deputies effective immediately,” Sheriff Bill Gore said in a written statement. “I have and always will listen to any feedback about the public safety services we provide. Working together, we can ensure San Diego remains the safest urban county in the nation.”

Read More >>>

Vallejo police revealed Wednesday that a shooting by police a day earlier had resulted in the death of a 22-year-old robbery suspect who had a hammer in his waistband amid a chaotic night of looting.

The man, identified as Sean Monterrosa, was killed outside a Walgreens store by a Vallejo officer, whom Police Chief Shawny Williams declined to name, describing the officer only as a veteran of the force.

The shooting death could further inflame tensions in Vallejo, a city of 121,000 in the northern San Francisco Bay Area where there have been peaceful protests and clashes with authorities.

Read More >>>

EAGAN, Minn. — Growing up in a shack surrounded by piney woods and tobacco fields in eastern North Carolina, George Floyd’s aunt Angela Harrelson was taught by her sharecropper parents how to get along in a slowly desegregating America: Sit at the back of the bus, do what white folks tell you, “stay strong and hold on.”

That’s what she did when she boarded the local school bus in the 1970s and white students blocked the seats with their feet, making her stand in the aisle. The bus driver, also white, would swerve and threaten to slap black students if they fell. Some days, he wouldn’t pick her up at all.

“But we held on,” Harrelson said as she sat at her kitchen table this week in a Minneapolis suburb.

The abuse only stopped, she said, when a white girl boarded the bus one day and declared, “My Mama said this is wrong. Stop picking on them.”

Read More >>>

It’s only June but I think it’s safe to say that 2020 will go down in history as one terrible, horrible, unrelievedly crazy year. A pandemic, more than 100,000 Americans dead in three months, hospitals overrun, businesses closed, record unemployment, massive protests over racist police brutality — in some places turned violent by looters, agitators and “law and order” tactics and forcing curfews in daylight hours — and then a president who scattered peaceful crowds with chemical spray and rubber bullets to get a photo op in front of a church that didn’t want to be used as a photo op.

We keep thinking it can’t get worse, and then it does. (Wait, was that another earthquake?)

I’m not even going to mention things like toilet paper hoarding, demonstrations over beach closures and face-covering requirements, yeast scarcity and the arrival of murder hornets. OK, I just did. But frankly, they all seem kind of quaint — remember when we were trying to make masks out of dish towels and rubber bands?

So it’s not surprising that a lot of people are wondering if things are ever going to go “back to normal.” Can this country ever be the same again?

Read More >>>

If a curfew starts, but law enforcement doesn’t plan to immediately enforce it, is it actually in place?

That question was less philosophical and more practical in Los Angeles County on Wednesday. After government officials announced an overnight curfew would be in place starting at 9 p.m., county Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced that his department would begin enforcement at 10 p.m.

The apparent disconnect left many residents scratching their heads, especially after they received a pair of emergency alerts referencing the different times.

In a statement, Villanueva said his decision as to when to start enforcement was “consistent with the 1st Amendment rights of all citizens.”

“While law enforcement has fully mobilized to protect the community, trust is a two-way street,” he said. “In doing so, I am signaling my trust in the public, so we can all work together in partnership during these troubling times.”

County officials, for their part, explained it this way on Twitter: “The curfew for all of Los Angeles County starts at 9 p.m. Law enforcement departments can begin enforcing it at their discretion. Cities may also implement and enforce stricter curfews.”

One thing both the county and the sheriff agreed on, however, was that the curfew ends at 5 a.m. Thursday, and does not apply to law enforcement, first responders, people traveling to and from work and unsheltered individuals.

Read More > > >

A series of peaceful protests over the police killing of George Floyd rolled through Newport Beach on Wednesday.

Though the protests were calm, a television camera captured a scary scene on Balboa Boulevard when a vehicle zipped through a crowd of demonstrators — eventually colliding with a bicyclist.

No one was injured, and the driver stopped and is cooperating with the investigation, Newport Beach Police Department spokeswoman Heather Rangel said. It doesn’t appear to have been a deliberate action, she added.

Two other protests were scheduled in Newport Beach later in the evening, one on the pedestrian bridge over San Miguel Drive at Civic Center Park near City Hall, and another at the Back Bay.

Read More > > >

If a curfew starts but law enforcement doesn’t plan to immediately enforce it, is it actually in place?

That question was less philosophical and more practical in Los Angeles County on Wednesday. After government officials announced an overnight curfew would be in place starting at 9 p.m., county Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced that his department would begin enforcement at 10 p.m.

The apparent disconnect left many residents scratching their heads, especially after they received a pair of emergency alerts referencing the different times.

In a statement, Villanueva said his decision as to when to start enforcement was “consistent with the 1st Amendment rights of all citizens.”

“While law enforcement has fully mobilized to protect the community, trust is a two-way street,” he said. “In doing so, I am signaling my trust in the public, so we can all work together in partnership during these troubling times.”

County officials, for their part, explained it this way on Twitter: “The curfew for all of Los Angeles County starts at 9 p.m. Law enforcement departments can begin enforcing it at their discretion. Cities may also implement and enforce stricter curfews.”

Read More > > >

WASHINGTON — Former President Obama, weighing in amid the national wave of racial tension and protest against police brutality, urged the nation’s mayors Wednesday to review police use-of-force policies and make other reforms to combat racism.

Citing the “epic changes and events” of the last week, Obama said the protests in dozens of cities following the death of a black man at the hands of Minneapolis police could represent “an incredible opportunity for people to be awakened” to the problems of systemic racism.

“This is a moment — and we’ve had moments like this before — where people are paying attention,” Obama said at a virtual town hall on police reform hosted by My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, a nonprofit group he established to help young black men. “The fact that people are paying attention is an opportunity to educate and mobilize.”

Obama was not the only former president to speak to the nation’s turmoil at a time when President Trump’s response — including incendiary tweets and calls for using military force against protesters — has been criticized as divisive.

George W. Bush issued a statement Tuesday mourning the death of George Floyd and criticizing efforts to silence protesters. Jimmy Carter issued a statement Wednesday that ended, “We need a government as good as its people, and we are better than this.”

Read More > > >

LAS VEGAS — Three Nevada men with ties to a loose movement of right-wing extremists advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government have been arrested on terrorism-related charges in what authorities say was a conspiracy to spark violence during recent protests in Las Vegas.

Federal prosecutors say the three white men with U.S. military experience are accused of conspiring to carry out a plan that began in April in conjunction with protests to reopen businesses closed because of the coronavirus.

More recently, they sought to capitalize on protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a white officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air, prosecutors said.

The three men were arrested Saturday on the way to a protest in downtown Las Vegas after filling gas cans at a parking lot and making Molotov cocktails in glass bottles, according to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by the Associated Press.

“People have a right to peacefully protest. These men are agitators and instigators. Their point was to hijack the protests into violence,” said Nicholas Trutanich, U.S. attorney in Nevada. He referred to what he called “real and legitimate outrage” over Floyd’s death.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas on Wednesday said they self-identified as part of the “boogaloo” movement, which U.S. prosecutors said in the document is “a term used by extremists to signify coming civil war and/or fall of civilization.”

Read More > > >

UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium.

(Cheryl A. Guerrero / Los Angeles Times)

UCLA faced continued faculty outrage Wednesday as it tried to defend its role in the LAPD’s use of the university’s Jackie Robinson Stadium to process protesters and others arrested for curfew violations during the uprising sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.

Dozens of faculty members signed a letter Tuesday complaining about the use of the university property as a detention facility. It was especially galling, they said, to have used a stadium named after Robinson, a UCLA alumnus who is “an icon of the long and unfinished struggle for black freedom.” The university’s response — that it had been unaware of the use of the school property as a “field jail” — did little to satisfy its critics.

“This was a massive operation involving hundreds of arrested protesters, many, many LAPD officers, that went on for 10-12 hours at our university, and our leadership is telling us that they didn’t know?” said Ananya Roy, professor of urban planning and social welfare and director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. She said the faculty was “incredulous” at the university response.

The issue arose after the Los Angeles Police Department crowded protesters arrested in downtown Los Angeles and Westwood into sheriff’s buses and brought them to the stadium, where the university’s baseball team plays under a lease with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Read More > > >

More peaceful demonstrations occurred across Southern California on Wednesday, with thousands converging at the Los Angeles civic center to protest Dist. Atty Jackie Lacey.

The downtown protest was the biggest of numerous marches to express outrage at police brutality and the killing of George Floyd. There were marches in Hollywood, Whittier, Hancock Park, Long Beach, West Hollywood and Newport Beach.

Lacey has long been a target of some activists, who have criticized her for not prosecuting more police officers for misconduct. She’s locked in a runoff for reelection.

Thousands were standing in Grand Park in front of the criminal courthouse.

In West Hollywood, protester Nick Atkinson said, “I’m so freaking mad.”

He repeatedly yelled at sheriff’s deputies who were present about how they should be wearing masks, taking a knee and be held accountable for their actions.

He said he has lived in Los Angeles for 20 years and wanted to publicly protest to make clear that the killing of black men and women is wrong.

“Where are your masks. Why aren’t you wearing your masks? You’re all paid to serve and protect us,” he yelled. “Where are your masks?“

Read More > > >

Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes denounced one of his deputies Wednesday for wearing a patch associated with an extremist paramilitary group while policing a Costa Mesa protest over the killing of George Floyd.

After seeing the video of the deputy wearing a Three Percenters patch during a protest this week, Barnes said, “These symbols are not department-approved and are prohibited by policy, and contradict the values of the Sheriff’s Department.”

“This deputy’s decision to wear these patches, and the implication of his association with an extremist group, is unacceptable and deeply concerning to me,” Barnes said. “Any symbol can have multiple meanings and is open to interpretation, which is why [the] wearing of non-approved symbols and patches is strictly prohibited. Instances like this can forge a wedge separating law enforcement from the community we serve, especially during these turbulent times.”

The sheriff launched a probe into the deputy’s conduct and thanked the activists who publicized the behavior.

The unidentified deputy was among a group assigned to monitor a protest Tuesday night. A publicly shared video shows what appears to be a Stars and Stripes flag partially covered by the Three Percenters logo above the word “Oathkeeper.” It is visible in the middle of the deputy’s tactical vest on the video clip and appeared to cover the deputy’s name on the uniform.

Read More > > >

Police have arrested a Thousand Oaks woman after an online video allegedly shows her pepper-spraying protesters.

A group of demonstrators, who appeared to be teenagers, were standing on the side of the road chanting “Black lives matter,” when a driver at a red light rolled down her window and pepper-sprayed them, video footage shows. The video was filmed on Sunday at a protest in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.

“Get her license plate,” a voice in the video says after the incident.

The video then moves behind the car to capture the plate, which read “LUVMYUX.” The driver was in a Lexus UX.

The incident came to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s attention after it was posted to Twitter, Capt. Denise Silva said.

Detectives identified the driver as Amy Atkisson, 46, according to a department news release. The primary victim was a 16-year-old female.

Read More > > >

U.S. troops near the White House.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

Uniformed troops patrolled the streets of Washington near the White House on Wednesday afternoon with no protesters, creating a striking wartime image in the nation’s capital.

Troops and armed officials with “DEA” emblazoned on their vests were spotted patrolling each intersection on Constitution Avenue for more than half a mile in each direction from the White House.

The protests have largely taken place further north of Constitution Avenue, including Lafayette Square and through the downtown business district.

The troops were spotted ahead of what’s expected to be a sixth day of protests in the streets of Washington.

President Trump’s effort to use a military response to nationwide protests led to an extraordinary rupture with both his current and former secretaries of Defense on Wednesday, with one rejecting use of active-duty troops against protesters and the other accusing Trump of ordering the military to “violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.”

The statement by former Defense Secretary James N. Mattis was without precedent, and the effects on Trump are likely to be far-reaching. He denounced Trump for his actions on Monday, in which the president walked through Lafayette Park near the White House to pose in front of a church after protesters had been driven from the park by police and military units firing tear gas.

As a young Marine, Mattis wrote, he swore an oath to defend the Constitution.

“Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside,” he wrote in the statement, published by the Atlantic magazine.

Read more >>>

More than 60 people now face criminal charges in Los Angeles County stemming from their alleged roles in the looting and violent clashes that marred protests over police brutality and the death of George Floyd this week, authorities said Wednesday.

Many of the charges filed against the 61 defendants are for looting, according to the L.A. County district attorney’s office, but some people also face counts of burglary, robbery, identity theft, receiving stolen property, possession of a destructive device and assault and/or battery upon a peace officer.

“I support the peaceful organized protests that already have brought needed attention to racial inequality throughout our society, including in the criminal justice system,” Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey said in a statement. “I also have a constitutional and ethical duty to protect the public and prosecute people who loot and vandalize our community.”

The announcement of the charges came as protests over Floyd’s death stretched into a sixth day across Southern California.

Read more >>>

The nighttime curfews imposed in Los Angeles County because of protests over police brutality and the death of George Floyd are coming under growing scrutiny.

After several nights of scattered looting, there were very few problems Tuesday night even as thousands protested peacefully across the region. The arrests were mainly of protesters who refused to obey the curfew.

Los Angeles County extended its sweeping curfew for a fourth day — this time with reduced hours.

But Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said that while the curfews may have been warranted on Sunday and Monday nights, “now it seems like they are being used to arrest peaceful protesters.”

Read more >>>

County officials opted to begin the curfew at 9 p.m., three hours later than previous nights, although Sheriff Alex Villanueva said his deputies would not begin enforcement until 10 p.m. — meaning that residents in cities like Los Angeles could be subject to arrest at 9 p.m., while residents in areas patrolled by sheriff’s deputies could be outside until 10 p.m.

In all areas, however, the curfew ends at 5 a.m. Thursday, and does not apply to law enforcement, first responders, people traveling to and from work and unsheltered individuals.

In his most outspoken public rebuke of President Trump in months, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that California would “reject” any attempts by the White House to deploy the military in major cities to end civil unrest following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

“It won’t happen,” Newsom said during a visit to Hot & Cool Cafe in Leimert Park in South Los Angeles. “It’s not going to happen. We would reject it. We would push back against that.”

Dubbing himself a “president of law and order,” Trump threatened Monday to send “thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers” into U.S. cities.

Read more >>>

K-pop fans are famous for their persistent and creative ways to make online life miserable for people who demean their favorite artists and groups.

But on Wednesday, the genre’s sometimes-toxic community harnessed its digital savvy and mercilessness for more noble causes: shutting down white supremacist social media and overwhelming police tip lines meant to identify Black Lives Matter protesters.

A planned day of social media action from white supremacists, which was being promoted with the hashtag #whitelivesmatter, quickly went sideways. K-pop fans, who on any given day control a meaningful percentage of the trending topics across social media, decided to flood the tag with “fancam” footage of beloved acts like BTS and Blackpink. They also threw in memes ripping anyone earnestly using the tag to search for white-nationalist news.

Read more >>>

The Lakers held a Zoom conference on Tuesday with players, coaches and some executives to discuss the ongoing protests and civil unrest in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, according to people who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Former Lakers great Karem Abdul-Jabbar, who never has shied away from speaking about social injustice, was the guest speaker and he was riveting, according to people familiar with the call.

Participants talked about how the Lakers organization and players can help steer a positive change going forward in Los Angeles and around the country in a racially charged environment.

Read more >>

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to announce plans Thursday for the removal of an iconic statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Richmond’s prominent Monument Avenue, a senior administration official told the Associated Press.

The governor will direct the statue to be moved off its massive pedestal and put into storage while his administration seeks input on a new location, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak before the governor’s announcement.

The move comes amid turmoil across the nation and around the world over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes, even after he stopped moving.

The White House on Wednesday deleted a video from its Twitter account that claimed to depict rioters stockpiling rocks but actually showed safety barriers outside a Jewish organization in Sherman Oaks.

“Antifa and professional anarchists are invading our communities, staging bricks and weapons to instigate violence,” said the original tweet.

Chabad of Sherman Oaks had already tried to debunk the claim in a Facebook post this week.

“THESE ARE SECURITY BARRIERS and have been here for almost a year!” the post said. Chabad said it tried to alleviate any concerns by removing the rocks from the steel cages.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the tweet.

(Required)

As protests over the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd turned violent Sunday night, hundreds of looters targeted a car dealership in San Leandro, Calif.

By the time police arrived, at least 78 cars had filed out of the parking lot: Dodge Chargers, Jeep Wranglers, Jeep Cherokees.

Looters even drove off in high-end Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcats, which sell for about $90,000 each, authorities said.

“Looters [were] vandalizing the store or even burglarizing the store, getting access to the keys, and taking cars,” San Leandro Police Lt. Ted Henderson said.

So far, about 30 of the stolen vehicles have been located, and some are damaged, police said.

Read More >>>

Shattered glass and graffiti made up the four-photo slideshow chef Josef Centeno posted online Saturday.

In the first, there’s a hole where a window was, its existence evidenced only by the jagged shards of glass still embedded in the frame. In the last, the windows at his nearby Tex-Mex cantina Bar Amá are tagged in white graffiti.

The photos documented what happened the night before in downtown L.A., when anger, frustration and unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody grew into widespread protests. The torrent that swept through downtown L.A. on Friday flared up, at times, into vandalism and destruction.

On Sunday, Centeno followed up with another Instagram post in which he thanked followers for their offers to help and directed their support to Black Lives Matter, the Bail Project and the African American Policy Forum‘s #SayHerName project.

“We are OK — even if we don’t know what the future will hold,” he wrote. “What we do know is #blacklivesmatter.”

Since dine-in service was shut down in Los Angeles on March 15, many restaurants and chefs have been more active on social media. Collectively, they tell of an industry that’s been decimated by the coronavirus. Their posts document the real-time adjustments and decisions they’ve made during the pandemic. They highlighted new ways they had devised to feed and serve their communities and customers — some turning overnight into grocery suppliers, others sharing the efforts they were participating in to feed their unemployed and imperiled colleagues or the hospital workers putting their lives on the line fighting COVID-19.

Now, they’re using social media platforms to advocate beyond their restaurants, speaking out against racial injustice and encouraging their sizable follower bases to donate to the cause.

Read More >>>

The three other Minneapolis police officers at the scene of George Floyd’s death will face charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder, the Minnesota attorney general announced Wednesday.

State Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison also elevated charges against former Officer Derek Chauvin, who was recorded on video kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he begged for air, to second-degree murder.

Arrest warrants were issued for the three other officers. Aiding and abetting second-degree murder is a felony under Minnesota state law.

Ellison said during a news conference Wednesday that he does not believe “one successful prosecution can rectify” the pain felt by the community.

“He should be here,” Ellison said of Floyd. “But he’s not.”

Read More >>>