After four nights of rioting and destruction, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass instituted a downtown curfew on Tuesday, leading to relative peace over the past three nights.
With the curfew a demonstrated success, and enforced by local and state law enforcement without any visible federal support, Bass nonetheless refused to explain about why she waited so long to institute a curfew or even comment on the policy’s impact on public safety.
When asked by The Center Square why the mayor did not initiate a curfew sooner, Bass’s office did not answer. Instead it directed The Center Square to her curfew announcement.
Bass’s office then ignored a follow up regarding the mayor’s position on the curfew’s effectiveness and the apparent capacity of state and local law enforcement to enforce the curfew on their own.
The protests started on Friday, escalating into riots as individuals took hammers to concrete structures to create projectiles to hurl at officers. On Saturday morning, the violence started early as rioters threw melon-sized chunks of concrete into the windshields of incoming federal vehicles, leading to the now famous photograph of a man waving a Mexican flag while riding a motorcycle in circles around a burning vehicle in front of a line of police.
It wasn’t until late Saturday evening, after another day of worsening violence, that President Donald Trump called in the California National Guard.
Sunday featured the worst violence of all as horse-mounted officers were ambushed with flames, electric bikes and concrete were dropped off bridges onto officers’ heads and vehicles, and commercial-grade mortar and rocket fireworks were fired at police. All that led Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell to declare the department is “overwhelmed” and that there’s “no limit to what [rioters] are doing to our officers.”
Rioting continued into Monday night, when large-scale looting began in downtown Los Angeles. Bass finally ordered a curfew on Tuesday night.
On Monday night, LAPD made 96 arrests for failure to disperse, 14 for looting, one for assault with a deadly weapon, one for resisting arrest, and one for vandalism.
On Tuesday night, the first night of the curfew, LAPD made 203 arrests for failure to disperse, 17 for curfew violation, three for possession of a firearm, one for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, and one for pointing a laser at an LAPD airship.
On Wednesday night, there were 71 arrests for failure to disperse, seven for curfew violation, two for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, and one for resisting a police officer.
By Thursday night, there were just 33 arrests for failure to disperse, 13 for curfew violation, one for resisting a police officer, once for pointing a laser at a LAPD airship, and one for a robbery warrant following a curfew detention. The numbers demonstrated the rapid effectiveness of the curfew.
Republicans say Bass’s waiting until the fifth day of riots to order a curfew is part of a broader pattern of inaction. They say that includes the mayor’s conduct leading up to January’s devastating wildfires, which caused an estimated $250 billion in economic damage.
“Her response to the riots is the same as her response to January’s fires — by not reacting to obvious signs of trouble in both cases, she objectively made matters worse,” said Los Angeles Republican Party Chairwoman Roxanne Hoge to The Center Square.
After the fires, Bass said she “wasn’t aware” of warnings before the fires and wasn’t told not to go on her trip to Africa, where she attended the new Ghanaian president’s inauguration as the fires began.
She instead blamed Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristen Crowley for not making the risks more clear.
LAFD issued two separate media advisories, conducted multiple live and recorded media interviews about the predicted fire risk, and notified city officials in advance of the “upcoming weather event.”
Bass left for Ghana on Jan. 4, one day after the National Weather Service issued a Fire Weather Watch. Half an hour after LAFD was dispatched to the Palisades Fire, Bass issued a press release warning of increased fire risk.
Additionally the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which is owned by the city of Los Angeles as a public utility, had let 117 million gallon hilltop reservoir in the Pacific Palisades built to fight wildfires remain empty for nearly a year to make uncompleted repairs to its plastic cover. According to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the reservoir’s lack of water led hydrants to run dry at a critical juncture in the fires, and “impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors.”
Across Los Angeles more broadly, hundreds of fire hydrants had been stolen for scrap metal in advance of the fires, highlighting the local government’s challenges in maintaining basic order and infrastructure.
The sustained theft of basic infrastructure also includes the copper wire in streetlights, leading vast swathes of the city to remain dark at night. Bass responded to what her office called “rampant copper wire theft” by installing solar-powered streetlights as a solution that “disrupts the cycle of vandalism and robbery.”
Critics noted thieves would probably end up stealing the solar panels as well.
