Did Karen Bass 'prevent' LAPD from assisting 'overwhelmed' FBI? Alleged leak on LA riots sparks outrage
A whistleblower has claimed that amid the Los Angeles riots, LA Mayor Karen Bass blocked the LAPD from assisting authorities during a violent protest. The alleged leak was shared by an Instagram handle titled defendthelapd, and was later widely shared on X.
The post adds, 'This unprecedented political interference demands a federal investigation into potential endangerment of federal personnel and obstruction of emergency response.'
The leak has now prompted outrage online.
An update in the comment section of the above post stated Bass put out a statement shortly after this leak became public. She wrote on X, 'We will always protect the constitutional right for Angelenos to peacefully protest. However, violence, destruction and vandalism will not be tolerated in our City and those responsible will be held fully accountable.'
Bass has been heavily criticized for her response to the anti-ICE riots, including by Donald Trump, who slammed both her and Gavin Newsom. The President wrote on Truth Social, 'Governor Gavin Newscum and 'Mayor' Bass should apologize to the people of Los Angeles for the absolutely horrible job that they have done, and this now includes the ongoing L.A. riots. These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists. Remember, NO MASKS!'
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The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Protests intensify in Los Angeles after Trump deploys hundreds of National Guard troops
Tensions in Los Angeles escalated on Sunday (June 8, 2025) as thousands of protesters took to the streets in response to President Donald Trump's extraordinary deployment of the National Guard, blocking off a major freeway and setting self-driving cars on fire as law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bangs to control the crowd. Many protesters dispersed as evening fell and the police declared an unlawful assembly, a precursor to officers moving in and making arrests of people who don't leave. Some of those remaining threw objects at police from behind a makeshift barrier that spanned the width of a street, and others hurled chunks of concrete, rocks, electric scooters and fireworks at California Highway Patrol officers and their vehicles parked on the closed southbound 101 Freeway. Officers ran under an overpass to take cover. Protest against Trump's immigration crackdown Sunday's protests in Los Angeles, a sprawling city of 4 million people, were centered in several blocks of downtown. It was the third and most intense day of demonstrations against Trump's immigration crackdown in the region, as the arrival of around 300 Guard troops spurred anger and fear among many residents. The Guard was deployed specifically to protect federal buildings, including the downtown detention centre where protesters concentrated. Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said officers were 'overwhelmed' by the remaining protesters. He said they included regular agitators who show up at demonstrations to cause trouble. Protesters clashed with police in the streets and freeways of Los Angeles, as demonstrations over federal immigration raids stretched into a third day, and thousands of California National Guard troops deployed by President Trump began arriving in the city — Reuters (@Reuters) June 9, 2025 Several dozen people were arrested throughout the weekend of protest. One was detained Sunday for throwing a Molotov cocktail at police, and another for ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers. Mr. Trump responded to McDonnell on Truth Social, telling him to arrest protesters in face masks. 'Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!' he wrote. In San Francisco, officers monitoring protests arrested dozens of people on Sunday night after a group of people refused to comply with an order to disperse, police said in a statement on social media. Officers were monitoring a protest in the area of Sansome and Washington streets but declared an unlawful assembly when people in the group became violent, the San Francisco Police Department said. Many people left the scene, but some remained and some moved to Market and Kearny streets, where people vandalized buildings and a police vehicle. A small group continued to Montgomery Street and when they didn't comply with a dispersal order, police said officers arrested 60 people. Three officers were injured, including one who was taken to a hospital, police said. 'Individuals are always free to exercise their First Amendment rights in San Francisco but violence — especially against SFPD officers — will never be tolerated,' the statement said. In Los Angeles on Sunday morning, National Guard troops stood shoulder to shoulder, carrying long guns and riot shields as protesters shouted 'shame' and 'go home." After some closely approached the guard members, another set of uniformed officers advanced on the group, shooting smoke-filled canisters into the street. Minutes later, the Los Angeles Police Department fired rounds of crowd-control munitions to disperse the protesters, who they said were assembled unlawfully. Much of the group then moved to block traffic on the 101 freeway until state patrol officers cleared them from the roadway by late afternoon. Nearby, at least four self-driving Waymo cars were set on fire, sending large plumes of black smoke into the sky and exploding intermittently as the electric vehicles burned. By evening, police had issued an unlawful assembly order shutting down several blocks of downtown Los Angeles. Flash bangs echoed out every few seconds into the evening. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom requested Trump remove the guard members in a letter Sunday afternoon, calling their deployment a 'serious breach of state sovereignty.' He was in Los Angeles meeting with local law enforcement and officials. The deployment appeared to be the first time in decades that a state's national guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the administration's mass deportation efforts. Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass blamed the increasingly aggressive protests on Trump's decision to deploy the Guard, calling it a move designed to enflame tensions. They've both urged protesters to remain peaceful. 'What we're seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration," she said in an afternoon press conference. 'This is about another agenda, this isn't about public safety.' But McDonnell, the LAPD chief, said the protests were following a similar pattern for episodes of civil unrest, with things ramping up in the second and third days. He pushed back against claims by the Trump administration that the LAPD had failed to help federal authorities when protests broke out Friday after a series of immigration raids. His department responded as quickly as it could, and had not been notified in advance of the raids and therefore was not pre-positioned for protests, he said. Newsom, meanwhile, has repeatedly said that California authorities had the situation under control. He mocked Trump for posting a congratulatory message to the Guard on social media before troops had even arrived in Los Angeles, and said on MSNBC that Trump never floated deploying the Guard during a Friday phone call. He called Trump a 'stone cold liar.' The admonishments did not deter the administration. 'It's a bald-faced lie for Newsom to claim there was no problem in Los Angeles before President Trump got involved,' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. The arrival of the National Guard followed two days of protests that began Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount, a heavily Latino city south of the city, and neighboring Compton. Federal agents arrested immigrants in LA's fashion district, in a Home Depot parking lot and at several other locations on Friday. The next day, they were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office near another Home Depot in Paramount, which drew out protesters who suspected another raid. Federal authorities later said there was no enforcement activity at that Home Depot. Immigrant arrests in the LA The weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the LA area climbed above 100, federal authorities said. Many more were arrested while protesting, including a prominent union leader who was accused of impeding law enforcement. The protests did not reach the size of past demonstrations that brought the National Guard to Los Angeles, including the Watts and Rodney King riots, and the 2020 protests against police violence, in which Newsom requested the assistance of federal troops. The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor's permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In a directive Saturday, Trump invoked a legal provision allowing him to deploy federal service members when there is 'a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.' He said he had authorized the deployment of 2,000 members of the National Guard. Trump told reporters as he prepared to board Air Force One in Morristown, New Jersey, Sunday that there were 'violent people' in Los Angeles 'and they're not gonna get away with it.' Asked if he planned to send U.S. troops to Los Angeles, Trump replied: 'We're gonna have troops everywhere. We're not going to let this happen to our country.' He didn't elaborate. About 500 Marines stationed at Twentynine Palms, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) east of Los Angeles were in a 'prepared to deploy status' Sunday afternoon, according to the U.S. Northern Command.
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Los Angeles police order immigration protesters downtown to go home
LOS ANGELES -Police declared all of downtown Los Angeles to be an unlawful assembly area and ordered protesters to go home on Sunday night after a third day of demonstrations against President Donald Trump's immigration policy that sometimes included burning cars and hurling bottles at officers. National Guard troops - deployed by Trump over the weekend to help quell the protests in a move that California Governor Gavin Newsom called unlawful - guarded federal government buildings on Sunday. The unrest in Los Angeles has become a flashpoint in Trump's signature effort to clamp down on illegal immigration. The Republican president has pledged to deport record numbers of people who are in the country illegally and to lock down the U.S.-Mexico border, setting the ICE border enforcement agency a daily goal of arresting at least 3,000 migrants. California state and local officials, mainly Democrats, accuse Trump of inflaming initially small-scale protests by mounting a federal response. He calls the protesters insurrectionists. Several self-driving cars from Alphabet's Waymo were set ablaze on a downtown street on Sunday evening. Los Angeles police said some protesters had thrown concrete projectiles, bottles and other items at police. Police declared several rallies to be unlawful assemblies and later extended that to include the whole downtown area. Police on horseback tried to control the crowds. Some officers used flash-bang grenades and tear gas, CNN reported. Demonstrators shouted "Shame on you!" at police and some appeared to throw objects, video images showed. One group blocked the 101 Freeway, a downtown thoroughfare. City Police Chief Jim McDonnell told a media briefing on Sunday evening that people had a right to protest peacefully but the violence he had seen by some was "disgusting" and the protests were getting out of control. Police said they had arrested 10 people on Sunday and 29 the previous night, adding arrests were continuing. NEWSOM BLAMES TRUMP California Governor Newsom, a Democrat, said he requested the Trump administration withdraw its order to deploy 2,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles County, calling it unlawful. Newsom said in a post on X on Monday he planned to sue the administration over the deployment. "This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted. He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalize the National Guard. The order he signed doesn't just apply to CA. It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing," Newsom said, using California's abbreviation. "We're suing him." In response, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X that "Newsom did nothing as violent riots erupted in Los Angeles for days." Asked if the National Guard was needed, the police chief, McDonnell, said police would not "go to that right away," but added, "Looking at the violence tonight, I think we've got to make a reassessment." In a social media post, Trump called on McDonnell to do so. "He should, right now!!!" Trump added. "Don't let these thugs get away with this. Make America great again!!!" The White House disputed Newsom's characterization, saying in a statement, "Everyone saw the chaos, violence and lawlessness." Earlier on Sunday, about a dozen National Guard members, along with Department of Homeland Security personnel, pushed back a group of demonstrators outside a federal building in downtown Los Angeles, video showed. The U.S. Northern Command said 300 members of the California National Guard had been deployed to three spots in the Los Angeles area. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told CBS program "Face the Nation" that the National Guard would provide safety around buildings to people engaged in peaceful protest and to law enforcement. 'ALL ACTION NECESSARY' The Trump administration's immigration enforcement measures have also included residents who are in the country legally, some with permanent residence, spurring legal challenges. In a social media post on Sunday, Trump called the demonstrators "violent, insurrectionist mobs" and said he was directing his cabinet officers "to take all such action necessary" to stop what he called riots. Despite Trump's language, he has not invoked the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that empowers a president to deploy the U.S. military to suppress events such as civil disorder. Asked on Sunday whether he was considering doing so, he said, "It depends on whether or not there's an insurrection." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Saturday the Pentagon is prepared to mobilize active-duty troops "if violence continues" in Los Angeles, saying Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton were on high alert. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass blamed the Trump administration for inciting tension by sending in the National Guard. She also condemned protesters who became violent. "I don't want people to fall into the chaos that I believe is being created by the administration completely unnecessarily," she told a press conference. Vanessa Cardenas, head of the immigration advocacy group America's Voice, accused the Trump administration of "trumping up an excuse to abuse power, and deliberately stoke and force confrontations around immigration."
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
HC asks digital platforms to remove video clips defaming girl
The Kerala High Court on Monday directed the YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook platforms to remove forthwith the links of video clips trolling and lampooning a minor schoolgirl who made comments on a new Malayalam film. Justice N. Nagaresh passed the interim order on a writ petition filed by the girl's mother. According to the petition, the girl had spontaneously commented on a Malayalam film directed by her uncle on the occasion of its release on May 30. However in a malicious misuse of digital media, unknown third parties unlawfully appropriated the original footage and manipulated it into a vulgar and demeaning content. These distorted clips containing superimposed voiceovers, lewd commentary, and mocking background music, were widely disseminated through digital platforms. The tone and tenor of the original remarks were twisted beyond recognition, and the minor girl was portrayed in a humiliating manner. 'Image tarnished' As a result, she experienced severe psychological distress, including episodes of anxiety, emotional breakdown, and social withdrawal. It tarnishes her image but also poses a serious risk to her developmental and psychological stability, the petition added. Though a complaint was lodged with the police, no effective remedial or punitive measures have yet been taken by the law enforcement agencies, the petition said.
