American police have a difficult choice to make
Saturday’s events in Los Angeles signal difficult decisions ahead for American law enforcement — support the president's immigration crackdowns and stifle dissent, or do the right thing.
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Most of the bags going through screening at LAX on Monday evening were getting pulled aside for secondary inspection. I’m not sure why and it doesn’t really matter. After finding a multi-tool that I didn’t know was contained in a first aid kit, and inspecting my gas mask, a TSA agent let me through with kindness.
“Sorry about all this,” he said, nodding toward my flak jacket and saying he understood why I had the first aid kit, the vest and the mask.
“I’m glad you’re heading home safe after everything,” he told me.
It was a nice moment of humanity from a member of a sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security, which is not exactly known for its kindness and understanding. As we spoke, DHS Sec. Kristi Noem’s painted face yakked away in a pre-recorded clip about how her agency was keeping Americans safe. There isn’t a TV in the world that these folks don’t desperately want to be on.
Back in the city, Noem’s agents at ICE were continuing their work terrorizing immigrant communities in the raids that have prompted protests and unrest in Los Angeles, including the chaos of last weekend. Scroll your preferred social media platform for any length of time and you’re bound to find a video of ICE agents coming in like gangbusters in some city or town. These goons are cranked up, it seems, which is why Angelenos got so pissed in response to the raids that have been increasing in recent weeks.
This response was natural, and people like Stephen Miller, the architect of all this madness, had to have known it was only a matter of time before something like the events of the last two weeks in LA happened. In fact, for a political party that seems more interested in fighting its fellow Americans than people like Vladimir Putin, the civil disobedience in response to ICE raids in LA was probably welcome, because it meant they could finally send in the troops. Republicans have been clamoring for this for years. In LA, they finally got their wish with a nice little cherry on top: they also sent in the Marines.
But the troops sent in by Trump didn’t have to get involved. That’s because local police did the work of breaking up the protest for them.
How will police respond elsewhere?
As I wrote today for Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice, the actions by the LAPD and other local police are troubling for a variety of reasons. But at the top of my list of things to be concerned about in the wake of Saturday’s unrest is that the cops in LA — a Democratic stronghold — effectively did Donald Trump’s bidding by violently breaking up what was a mostly-peaceful protest. This doesn’t bode well for large-scale demonstrations in other Democratic cities, which Trump has explicitly said he’ll target with aggressive immigration raids. In places like Chicago and New York, those are likely to be met with the same resistance we’ve seen in LA. Then Trump will send in the troops, just like he did in Los Angeles, and once again it will be up to local law enforcement to decide what their role is amid these authoritarian power struggles.
There are certainly risks to letting Trump’s shock troops square off against protesters themselves, but elected officials and their law enforcement partners in Democratic cities will continue to be confronted with a difficult decision: allow Trump’s troops to stand on their own, possibly endangering the lives of protesters, or give Trump the scenes of unrest that he needs to push the bounds of executive power even further on his path to crushing dissent with gun-wielding intimidation.
If all this sounds like a constitutional crisis — military being deployed to quell citizen protests, jurisdictional turf wars between law enforcement and federal troops, questionable motives of people who have all the guns — that’s because it is. Accepting this disturbing reality is key to formulating the strategies required to uphold democracy against a would-be tyrant and his allies in Washington, corporate America, and the media.
Democratic officials in places like LA, Chicago and New York should not allow their police to become yet another arm of Trump’s growing army of paramilitary law enforcement agencies like DHS and ICE, as well as the actual military, which is duty-bound to adhere to his commands. (If there was a moment for a branch of our armed forces to disobey an unethical order from the president, it came and went when Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth sent 700 Marines to stand on the steps of the federal building in downtown LA. The Marines obeyed. They did not pass the test.)
It was on those steps that the crowd was jostling with members of law enforcement and the military, particularly enraged by the sight of the Marines there. Moments later, after allegedly being struck by projectiles from the crowd, local law enforcement swept up for the troops on the steps, clearing the area in front of the federal building and pushing in all directions for hours as police fired on protesters — whether they were fighting back or not.
As a result, Trump and his allies got the scenes they wanted: protesters facing off against brave cops. This narrative — conveniently free of the context of what actually happened on the streets on Saturday — is embodied by a Fox News report from behind police lines, in which a correspondent went as far as to claim that protesters were throwing “boulders” at police.
I didn’t see any boulders at all in downtown LA, let alone protesters throwing them at cops.
Stifling dissent
Prosecutors in LA have charged or cited protesters with various crimes for the unrest that has taken place in recent weeks, including an undocumented immigrant charged with attempted murder for allegedly throwing a molotov cocktail at police. In all, nearly 600 people have been arrested and charged for their actions in Los Angeles, and the LAPD reported that 10 officers were injured in Saturday’s unrest but have not detailed those injuries. One man has been charged with a felony for handing out face shields to protesters. Prosecutors noted the man, Alejandro Orellana, had a notebook at his home that contained the phrase “All cops are bastards.” At a press conference on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said the face shields that Orellana allegedly distributed to protesters “protect violent agitators from less than lethal weapons deployed by law enforcement."
It is not illegal for citizens to purchase protective gear, just like it’s not illegal for Americans to purchase firearms. But the charges against Orellana are part of a pattern of officials, mostly in Republican states, criminalizing aspects of protesting. These efforts came in the wake of widespread demonstrations after the killing of George Floyd.
Face protection is important in these environments, made abundantly obvious by the case of Marshall Woodruff, who was struck on Saturday by a foam projectile and, as a result, might lose sight in his right eye. Police haven’t detailed the nature of the 10 injuries to law enforcement. Just five people were arrested during Saturday’s unrest — another fact that prompts me to wonder just how necessary it was for LA police to do what they did on Saturday.
That’s part of a larger question for American law enforcement: what will they do when this chaos comes to their town?
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