2 days ago
Trump ordered National Guard from 'top down'
STORY: :: June 8, 2025
:: Los Angeles, California
:: LA police chief says his team would not have deployed the National Guard; Trump ordered it from the 'top down'
:: Jim McDonnell, Police Chief, Los Angeles
'We could handle this. I believe that we would have gone through a number of steps before we'd have deployed the National Guard or requested deployment of the National Guard. We would normally go to 50 percent deployment to handle radio calls and to do the business of policing. And everybody else would be focused on the initial problem. Beyond that, then we would request through the sheriff mutual aid, and that would bring in members of the 44 other police departments in LA County, as well as the sheriff's office. And so that didn't occur in this case because it wasn't done through the sheriff or through the… up through the normal chain. It was done from the top down, from the president (U.S. President Donald Trump) directing that that happened. And then the National Guard was federalized. So, they're working for the U.S. Army, not for the California State National Guard.'
'This violence that I've seen is disgusting. It's escalated now since the beginning of this incident. What we saw the first night was bad. What we've seen subsequent to that is getting increasingly worse and more violent. Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial grade fireworks at our officers, that can kill you. And we have adapted our tactics to be able to have a chance to be able to take these people into custody and to be able to hold them accountable.'
California National Guard troops were deployed to the streets of Los Angeles on Sunday to help quell a third day of protests over Trump's immigration enforcement, a step the state's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, called unlawful.
'They're working for the U.S. Army, not for the California State National Guard,' said police chief Jim McDonnell, speaking to the media in a briefing, adding that the police would have 'gone through a number of steps' before turning to federal troops.
McDonnell highlighted that violence around the protests was escalating.
"What we saw the first night was bad. What we've seen subsequent to that is getting increasingly worse and more violent. Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial grade fireworks at our officers, that can kill you. And we have adapted our tactics to be able to have a chance to be able to take these people into custody and to be able to hold them accountable.'
National Guard troops guarded federal government buildings on Sunday, as police and protesters clashed in separate demonstrations over federal immigration raids in Los Angeles.
