Downtown Los Angeles vandalized after protests. ‘It's kind of the usual,' residents say

Los Angeles Times

5 hours ago

In the overcast light — on a chilly, gray Monday morning in June — a cluster of city workers quietly gathered outside Los Angeles City Hall to assess the damage.
After thousands of demonstrators converged downtown over the weekend to protest the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants in the country without documentation, the granite walls of the towering Art Deco seat of city government was marked up with fresh graffiti, with the same four-letter expletive preceding the word 'ICE' in about a dozen places.
On the south and west sides of City Hall, about a dozen windows were smashed. At least 17 glass-covered light boxes surrounding the structure were busted, with broken shards of blue-gray glass covering the light fixtures.
On the front steps, insults daubed in spray paint were directed at both Mayor Karen Bass and President Trump.
The vandalism and graffiti stretched out block after block across downtown Los Angeles: 'Remove Trumps head!!' was scrawled on the front facade of the Los Angeles County Law Library. The T-Mobile store on South Broadway had several windows boarded up, and glass still littered the sidewalk. Spent canisters, labeled 'exact impact,' lay on the ground at various intersections.
The former Los Angeles Times building was scrawled with expletives, along with the words: 'Immigrants rule the world.' The doors to its historic Globe Lobby were shattered, with graffiti on the large globe inside and across the building's facade: 'Return the homies' and 'Trump is scum.'
But few Angelenos appeared outraged by the destruction.
'It's kind of the usual. We always have protests,' said Eileen Roman as she walked her dog near Grand Central Market.
As the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, she said she understood why people were protesting. Although she didn't plan to join them on the streets, she said, she would be involved on social media.
'I think we all are concerned about what's going on,' Roman, 32, said of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
Thomas Folland, a downtown resident and art history professor at Los Angeles Mission College, also said he wasn't particularly concerned by the graffiti and vandalism he saw Monday morning.
'I was curious to see what the aftermath was this morning,' Folland said, noting that it was a particularly loud night at his apartment. But so far, he said, it wasn't anything that worried him — though he noted his apartment building did start boarding up its windows in anticipation of what might come later this week.
'I'm not that offended by graffiti,' Folland said. 'This is at least a genuine community expression.'
Sunday marked the third day of protests in downtown Los Angeles after federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested immigrants at a Home Depot parking lot, L.A.'s Garment District, and several other locations on Friday.
As President Trump ordered the deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops to the city, tensions escalated Sunday. Demonstrators blocked the 101 Freeway, set self-driving cars ablaze and hurled incendiary devices — and, in some cases, chunks of concrete — at law enforcement officers. Police, in turn, wielded tear gas and rubber bullets.
At 8:56 p.m. Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a social media post that 'agitators have splintered' throughout downtown and an unlawful assembly had been declared for the Civic Center area.
'Residents, businesses and visitors to the Downtown Area should be alert and report any criminal activity,' LAPD Central Division said on X. 'Officers are responding to several different locations to disperse crowds.'
About half an hour later, the LAPD expanded its unlawful assembly across downtown Los Angeles. By 10:23 p.m., police said business owners were reporting that stores were being broken into and burglarized in the area of 6th Street and Broadway.
'All DTLA businesses or residents are requested to report any vandalism, damage or looting to LAPD Central Division so that it can be documented by an official police report,' LAPD Central Division said just before midnight. 'Please photograph all vandalism and damage prior to clean up.'
Eric Wright and his wife, Margaux Cowan-Banker, vacationers from Knoxville, Tenn., were on a jog Monday morning downtown and paused to take photos — past scores of police vehicles — of the graffiti-covered Federal Building at 300 N. Los Angeles St., which houses offices for ICE, the IRS, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies.
There was egg on the exterior walls and spray-painted slogans with expletives.
'When tyranny becomes law,' one graffiti said, 'rebellion becomes duty,'
The couple — who laughed about being red-state denizens in L.A. during this time — said the peaceful protesters, of which they saw many Sunday night, didn't bother them.
Though 'the graffiti is tough — I appreciate the sentiment, but someone's gotta clean it up,' said Wright, a 37-year-old physical therapist.
'But a few graffiti-ists don't make the protest, right?'
As dawn broke Monday, city crews had already fanned out across downtown, cleaning up the aftermath.
Several yellow city street sweepers drove up and down Los Angeles Street in front of the federal courthouse, between blooming purple jacarandas and scores of police vehicles from various SoCal cities.
Just before 9 a.m., two workers from C. Erwin Piper Technical Center carried planks of plywood to City Hall to board up the windows. When they were done, they told The Times, they planned to head across the street to repair the Los Angeles Police Department's headquarters.
Members of the National Guard were stationed outside the federal detention center and downtown Los Angeles V.A. clinic at Alameda and Temple streets, and police cars blocked roads around the federal buildings.
A person in a silver SUV — their head entirely covered by a white balaclava — drove by the barricade at Commercial and Alameda streets, window down. They flipped off the officers standing nearby.
Some stores that were typically open on a Monday morning remained shuttered, including Blue Bottle Coffee. But others, including Grand Central Market, were already buzzing with customers.
Octavio Gomez, a supervisor with the DTLA Alliance, quickly rolled black paint onto a wall next to Grand Central Market that had been newly covered in graffiti.
'Today's a bad day because of … last night,' Gomez said, noting his teams had been working since 5 a.m. to respond to the damage across the city. 'It's all going to come back, right? Because there's still protests.'
For the couple from Knoxville, the juxtaposition between their weekend in L.A. and news coverage of the protests felt bizarre.
They had an idyllic Los Angeles Sunday — a food festival, the L.A. Pride March in Hollywood, a visit to Grand Central Market.
But on TV and social media, Los Angeles was portrayed as a place of total chaos.
'People back where we live are going to completely be horrified,' said Cowan-Banker, a 42-year-old personal trainer. 'I'm sure they think it's a war zone here.'
But Wright said he thought people should be protesting the Trump administration: 'They're stealing people off the streets from their families,' he said, referring to the ICE raids. 'This is America. To send the National Guard was intentionally inflammatory.'
'This feeds right into his voters,' Wright said of Trump.
'And they're the people we go home to,' his wife added. 'I'm kinda glad we're here to carry information, though no one's gonna listen.'
The couple, at the halfway point of their five-mile morning run, kept on snapping their photos, past a line of police cars.