LOS ANGELS (CNS) - Three Los Angeles City Council members filed a motion today to increase the scope of a report regarding the police department's use of force and crowd control tactics during recent protests against police brutality.
Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez and Councilmen Mike Bonin and Marqueece Harris-Dawson moved to include an analysis of the Los Angeles Police Department's crowd control tactics and compliance with existing departmental policies as well as its legal mandates during the recent protests spurred by the May 25 in-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
On June 2, Rodriguez and Harris-Dawson introduced a motion directing the chief of police to present an “after action report'' to the council analyzing the LAPD's actions leading up to and during the recent civil unrest, and the motion filed Wednesday expands on that.
The report will now include an analysis of crowd control tactics, including the deployment of police in full riot gear to block the movement of protesters, decisions to declare unlawful assemblies and curfews, information on how those declarations were conveyed to protesters as well as information on the LAPD's compliance with existing departmental policies and legal mandates on use of force.
The analysis will also include a discussion on the firing of rubber bullets and other types of riot control ammunition into crowds, at “bystanders and at people's heads,'' the steps police used to announce unlawful assemblies and curfews, decisions to deploy officers to block peaceful protesters from marching and how those decisions were enforced.
The LAPD report would include how individuals arrested during the protests for curfew violations or failure to disperse were handled after their arrests, including information on whether social distancing and other public health guidelines were followed to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
The report would also include information on how police enforced curfews and dispersal orders on homeless people.
Finally, the motion suggests former Police Commissioner Gerald Chaleff, the author of the department's review of the 2007 May Day incident in MacArthur Park, take the lead of the review of LAPD actions during the recent protests.
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