When Bridgette Covelli arrived to the Los Angeles City Hall for last Saturday’s No Kings celebrations, she saw what she called a calm scene: people holding signs, dancing, and chanting. She could see that no one was fighting with the police.
Hours would pass before the city’s curfew was enforced. However, Covelli claimed that officers suddenly started shooting rubber bullets and hurling smoke bombs into the crowd, which had assembled to express disapproval of the Trump administration’s harsh immigration enforcement tactics.
No order for dispersal. “Not a thing,” she said. We were doing everything correctly. There was no hostility directed at them.
When a second line of police blocked portions of the road, 23-year-old Covelli snatched up an electric bike and headed up Third Street. She stumbled off the bike and hit the sidewalk with a jolt of agony in her arm.
After being hit by a hard-foam projectile fired by an unidentified LAPD officer, she was in a stupor until she discovered she was bleeding.
The teenage tattoo artist’s injuries, which included a shattered forearm, sent her to the hospital and prevented her from working.
I’ve been unable to sketch. “I can’t even properly brush my teeth,” she remarked.
She is one of the journalists and protesters injured this month after LAPD cops used paintball-style weapons that shoot pepper spray into the air, foam projectiles, tear gas, and flash-bang grenades on them.
The LAPD is once again the target of harsh criticism and legal action due to methods employed during the last two weeks, despite years of expensive lawsuits, supervision procedures, and leaders’ pledges to limit the use of force during protests.
During a press conference held at police headquarters last week, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell defended officers who he claimed were handling an extremely dynamic and chaotic situation and pledged a thorough review after everything was finished.
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According to a recently filed lawsuit, the LAPD has a lengthy history of deploying excessive force on journalists during protests, and recent acts are said to have injured multiple people.
According to police sources, force was only applied after a number of agitators started throwing bottles, fireworks, and other objects at the cops. Confrontations resulted in at least a dozen police injuries, including one where a demonstrator crashed a motorcycle into a line of officers. Several individuals have been charged with assault by L.A. County prosecutors for their attacks on law enforcement.
Behind the scenes, tensions occasionally ran high between LAPD commanders and City Hall officials, who pushed for restraint in the early hours of the downtown protests, according to communications examined by The Times and several sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not permitted to speak publicly.
According to communication records, Mayor Karen Bass called McDonnell and LAPD Capt. Raul Jovel, the incident commander, on June 6, the Friday that the protests started. According to insiders, Bass or her senior staff members were constantly present at a command center in Elysian Park in the days that followed. From there, local and federal officials kept an eye on the events taking place on the ground.
Not being able to make arrests sooner, before demonstrators flooded into downtown, has been a private grievance for several LAPD officers. Despite the general calm, a small number of people who overflowed the streets damaged stores, cars, and other items. Additionally, LAPD commanders have highlighted advancements over previous years, such as measures to expedite the release of jailed individuals and limitations on the use of bean-bag shotguns for crowd control.
However, the most recent protest response is generally viewed as another step backward by veteran LAPD observers. The city is currently facing yet another round of costly court battles after spending millions on cases pertaining to protests over the past ten years.
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In a department-wide statement this week, the LAPD chief stated that some officers experience mixed emotions of fear, frustration, loyalty, and perhaps even guilt when the community incorrectly perceives them as belonging to something they are not.
Mayor Bass and other city officials are conveniently claiming that the Fed is to blame and that Trump is to blame. “No, look at your own force,” advised veteran civil rights lawyer James DeSimone, who recently brought multiple government lawsuits alleging excessive force against the county and the city.
A request for comment was not immediately answered by a Bass representative.
During an appearance before the City Council last week, McDonnell, a member of the LAPD command staff during an aggressive police crackdown on immigrant rights demonstrators on May Day in 2007, found himself on the defensive when he was questioned about his preparedness and whether more could have been done to prevent property damage.
A few days later, McDonnell told reporters, “We’ll look and see if there are training issues, tactics [issues], or less-lethal issues that need to be addressed.”
During Saturday’s No Kings march, one of the most potentially embarrassing occurrences happened when LAPD officers were heard on a public radio channel stating that they were being friendly fire from L.A. County sheriff’s deputies firing less-lethal shots.
The incident was confirmed by three LAPD individuals who are not permitted to talk in public. The Sheriff’s Department has not received any reports of friendly fire events, according to a statement from the department’s spokesperson.
Protesters claim that LAPD cops purposefully singled out non-threatening people.
On June 8, while he was observing a protest winding past LAPD headquarters, Shakeer Rahman, a civil rights lawyer and community organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, saw two coworkers who were demanding to know an officer’s badge number being shot at close range with a 40mm less-lethal launcher.
He provided a recording of the event in which Rahman is heard pacing back and forth on a high platform while the cop threatens to fire.
The cop can be heard screaming, “I’m going to pop you right now, because you’re taking away my focus,” before he lifts his rifle over the glass barrier separating them and fires two foam bullets at Rahman, almost hitting him in the groin.
When Rahman pointed out that a 2021 court order prohibits the use of 40mm launchers in the majority of crowd-control scenarios, he stated, “It’s an officer who doesn’t want to be questioned and knows he can get away with firing these shots.”
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A number of viral incidents have resulted from the deployment of LAPD police and L.A. County sheriff’s deputies in reaction to protests over federal immigration policies, raising concerns about the role of local law enforcement in putting an end to the turmoil.
Later on June 8, department management approved the deployment of tear gas on a crowd as clashes between protesters and officers grew more intense in other downtown areas. This is a normal procedure among other agencies, but it hasn’t been utilized by the LAPD in decades.
When cops began to be attacked with commercial pyrotechnics, some of which contained shrapnel, it was necessary to use it in these conditions, McDonnell told The Times. On a different day, we make advantage of the resources at our disposal.
In opposition to Trump’s troop deployment to Los Angeles, state and local leaders have argued that the LAPD is more equipped to manage protests than federal troops. They claim that local police officers are familiar with the downtown area where the majority of protests take place and receive frequent training on crowd management techniques including de-escalation.
However, several demonstrators told The Times that they believed the LAPD officers were using violence more quickly than they had in previous years.
Following the June 8 march from City Hall to the federal Metropolitan Detention Center on Alameda Street was 36-year-old Raphael Mamoun. Digital security professional Mamoun said his group eventually joined other protesters and was apprehended by LAPD close to the Temple and Alameda intersection, when a standoff with LAPD officers resulted.
He claimed that after about an hour, mayhem suddenly broke out.
“Basically, you had a line of mounted police coming behind the line of cops that were on foot, and then they just started charging, moving forward super fast, pushing people, screaming at people, and shooting rubber bullets,” he said. “I don’t know if they made any announcements or dispersal orders.”
Mamoun’s grievances were in line with those of other protesters and Times reporters who visited several demonstration sites during the week. At times, LAPD dispersion instructions could only be heard when they were transmitted from an overhead helicopter. Toward the end of Saturday s hours-long No Kings protests, many demonstrators contended officers used force against crowds that had been relatively peaceful all day.
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The LAPD’s harsh response to protesters is still divisive and expensive five years after the 2020 mega protests.
The LAPD s use of horses has also raised widespread concern, with some protesters saying the department s mounted unit caused injuries and confusion rather than bringing anything resembling order.
Onevideo captured on June 8by independent journalist Tina-Desiree Berg shows a line of officers on horseback advance into a crowd while other officers fire less-lethal rounds at protesters shielding themselves with chairs and road signs. It shows a demonstrator who appears to be hurt as they collapse to the ground. The mounted units continue marching forward even as the person desperately tries to roll out of the way. Several horses trample over the person s prone body before officers arrest them.
At other scenes, mounted officers were weaving through traffic and running up alongside vehicles that were not involved with the demonstrations. In one incident on June 10, a Times reporter saw a mounted officer smashing the roof of a car repeatedly with a wooden stick.
It just seems like they are doing whatever the hell they want to get protesters, and injure protesters, Mamoun said.
Audrey Knox, 32, a screenwriter and teacher, was also marching with the City Hall group on June 8. She stopped to watch a tense skirmish near the Grand Park Metro stop when officers began firing projectiles into the crowd.
Some protesters said officers fired less-lethal rounds into groups of people in response to being hit with flying objects. Although she said she was well off to the side, she was still struck in the head by one of the hard-foam rounds.
Other demonstrators helped her get to a hospital, where Knox said she received five staples to close her head wound. In a follow-up later in the week, a doctor said she had post-concussion symptoms. The incident has made her hesitant to demonstrate again, despite her utter disgust for the Trump administration s actions in Los Angeles.
It just doesn t seem smart to go back out because even when you think you re in a low-risk situation, that apparently is not the case, she said. I feel like my freedom of speech was directly attacked, intentionally.
Times staff writers Julia Wick, Connor Sheets and Richard Winton contributed to this report.
