A limited curfew will go into effect in parts of downtown Los Angeles to “to stop the vandalism [and] the looting” amid ongoing unrest in the city, LA’s Mayor Karen Bass has announced.
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday local time, she declared a local emergency and said the curfew will run from 8pm on Tuesday PDT to 6am on Wednesday PDT.
The curfew could last for a number of days, she flagged, and law authorities will be consulted.
It will impact a 2.5 square kilometre area of the city and won’t apply to residents and those who work in downtown LA. Mayor Bass urged others to avoid the area.
A curfew had been considered for a number of days, but it ultimately got the green light starting Wednesday night after 23 businesses were looted on Tuesday night, as reported by SBS News.
Bass noted the majority of demonstrators are protesting peacefully, and it’s a smaller number of agitators to be blamed for violence and looting.
She also pointed out the unrest has been limited to a few downtown blocks.
Addressing the media, LA Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the curfew is a “necessary” measure to “protect lives and safeguard property”.
“We’ve seen a concerning escalation in unlawful and dangerous behaviour,” he said, per ABC News.
Over 370 arrests have been made since the protests began, with nearly 200 made today alone. A number of these were for blocking streets, freeways, and lamps, McDonnell said.
With the curfew, any person who remains “engaged in unlawful assembly or criminal activity will be detained and arrested,” the Los Angeles Police Department said in a recent post on X (formerly Twitter).
The move comes on the fifth day of protests against US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers carrying out a series of raids across the city. Following two days of clashes, Trump ordered 2,000 National Guard troops to the city to support immigration agents as they made arrests.
LA Mayor Bass said she doesn’t know how long ICE raids will continue.
“I want to tell him to stop the raids. I want to tell him that this is a city of immigrants. I want to tell him that if you want to devastate the economy of the city of Los Angeles, then attack the immigrant population,” she told reporters.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom and other critics claim the federal government’s mobilisation of military personnel — which includes the deployment of 700 Marines on top of the 4,000 National Guard members already activated — is an unnecessary and illegal intervention.
The state of California has filed a lawsuit against Trump and the US defence department to block the deployment of federal troops, and on Wednesday local time, it sought an immediate ruling on the narrow issue of their participation in police enforcement, per Time Magazine. A hearing has been set for Friday local time.
Trump has justified the decision to deploy troops by describing the protests as a violent occupation, which both Newsom and Bass say is grossly exaggerated.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president claimed LA would be “burning right now” if not for the deployments. He said the national guard troops would remain until there is no danger.
Lead image: Getty
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