Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Thursday that the city would be ending its curfew, which has been in place since Saturday, May 30.
Garcetti claimed that the curfew was being lifted because recent demonstrations — i.e. for the last 48 hours — had been peaceful. “Angelenos are rallying around powerful and peaceful demonstrations against racial injustice,” Garcetti said, as quoted by Yahoo! News.
However, the announcement also came after Black Lives Matter and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the city on Wednesday, along with Garcetti and a slew of city and county officials.
The lawsuit claims (emphasis added): “Upon information and belief, between May 29 and June 3, 2020, approximately 30,000 people participated in protest demonstrations, almost of all of which were entirely peaceful, throughout Los Angeles County.”
It acknowledges rioting and looting, but blames “third parties who were not part of Black Lives Matter or most other organized protest groups.”
It also claims that such incidents happened “only” in a few places, such as “Downtown and Fairfax, Hollywood, Long Beach, Santa Monica, and Van Nuys areas of Los Angeles County.”
Moreover, it claims that the rioters had not “caused physical harm to anyone attending a protest, and not a single person has died in the course of any conflict arising from a protest.”
On Thursday, Fox News told the story of Latino merchants at a store selling musical instruments in Santa Monica who were held at gunpoint by looters during a Black Lives Matter protest nearby:
Calling 911 proved to be futile. According to the frightened Music Center owner, they were informed that police could not get to the scene, and if they were registered gun owners, they could protect their private property. However, California has some of the strictest gun legislation in the country, including magazine limitations and a 10-day waiting period after purchase.
The violence only escalated as more and more looters descended.
“There were gunshots fired, and those trying to help us had guns pulled on them,” Negrete tremored. “One of the guys got out of his car and looked at my friend’s baseball bat and said, ‘what the f*ck you going to do with that?’ and pulled out his gun. Another friend had a gun put in his face and was called a f**got-ass b*tch.”
Many stores and businesses remain boarded up throughout the region.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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