LAPD Union ‘Blasts’ Department Command Staff for Meager Response to Trump Protests

Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) blasted department command staff Monday for the meager police response to Trump protesters.

LAPPL director Robert Harris accused LAPD command staff of “mismanagement” of officers and claimed “understaffing of the department has been going on since the beginning of the year.”

According to the Los Angeles Daily News, LAPPL President Craig D. Lally sent a letter asking Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin to investigate the number of officers deployed in response to protests. Lally suggested:

The Los Angeles Police Department lacked the baseline resources to effectively keep the public and police officers safe during these very well publicized protests. We are seeking your intervention to determine why officers were not held over or why officers were not called back to keep the peace during these protests.

He added, “[LAPD officers] were completely overwhelmed by the number of protestors (sic).” And he pointed to a protest that occurred November 9, for which “only three LAPD motorcycle units were dispatched to prevent hundreds of protestors from swarming Highway 101.”

LAPD public information director Josh Rubenstein responded by explaining that the protests erupted suddenly in some instances and were “thus difficult to predict.” Rubenstein said the LAPD was taking a “proactive and forward-leaning approach to enable safe and lawful expressions of speech” while deploying a greater number of officers, when possible, for the kind of large protests witnessed on Saturday, November 12.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

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