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Over the weekend, Santa Monica was hit hard by rioters and looters.
According the Santa Monica police department - they arrested hundreds of people. However most of them were not residents.
Of the 400 arrests made on Sunday, 95% lived in different cities. These looters destroyed multiple businesses after the mostly peaceful protests. Arrests were made for crimes such as burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, looting and curfew violations, police Chief Renaud said
The National Guard was called in to disperse the crowd, police deployed tear gas and a curfew was set in place.
City officials emphasized that they did not believe most of the looters were associated with the protest.
Santa Monica Mayor Kevin McKeown issued a statement early Monday morning.
"Sunday was one of the most distressing days in Santa Monica history. We know better than to let the looters obscure the message of the protesters, who have indeed been heard. What a small and selfish criminal element has done instead is to bring our community more closely together. We will support our local businesses to recover from this. Much was lost on Sunday, including property and innocence. As Mayor, I'm grateful that we did not lose any lives," he wrote.
Neighbors were shocked with what they saw.
"Very frightening, it was just like mobs of people everywhere. Nobody cared about anything. They took almost everything," one man said. "The local grocery stores. Where are people gonna eat? People still need to eat. I mean, we're just recovering from a major whatever, you know. We're just getting back on our feet and now this. We need to pull together as a community, all one, and say, hey look, we're all sympathetic for what happened. People don't deserve to die, but a lot of people don't deserve to get hurt either."
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