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June 14, 2025 LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell and Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna discuss major takeaways from this week’s demonstrations and rioting
PERF members, The demonstrations and rioting in Los Angeles have been the biggest story in the country this week. I spoke with LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell and Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna on Thursday morning about how local law enforcement is handling the situation. This conversation occurred before a federal judge ruled Thursday night that the President must return control of the National Guard to the state of California and that ruling was temporarily blocked by an appeals court yesterday morning pending a hearing next week. Chuck Wexler: You’ve both had very challenging weeks! Chief McDonnell, what have been some of your major takeaways? LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell:When we have issues like this with unrest, we know what to do. We mobilize our department to boost our resources internally. When that becomes insufficient, we reach out for mutual aid through the sheriff. We did that. All the Southern California agencies—police and sheriffs’ departments—come together to help and are given defined missions. That has worked tremendously in the past.
The next level would be to reach out through the sheriff to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services to request the National Guard. We were not there [this week] and we are not there now. The reason was that this is a very localized event. It’s downtown. Most of it is happening in one square mile. In our experience, civil unrest on a scale where we would need the National Guard is much more widespread than that. I think back to 1992, and we needed all the resources we could get during that incident. There were many, many fires. It was a different kind of situation. This one is localized. We’re seeing tactics deployed against our officers that we haven’t seen before. For example, the use of Molotov cocktails. We’ve seen this across the world in different places where that happens fairly routinely. But we haven’t seen that in the U.S., and we’re starting to see that now. We arrested a couple people for using Molotov cocktails, and they were charged federally. So we’re trying to send a clear message on that, and we now have a district attorney who’s prosecuting cases more aggressively than we’ve seen in the recent past. The weapons they’re using against us include those Molotov cocktails and commercial-grade fireworks. They’re using PVC pipe to launch those toward our people, and they’re putting fragmentation in the explosive so that you potentially end up with something similar to a grenade. Some protesters are using radios and police scanners to know where we’re deploying and creating diversions when we’re ready to do something in an area. And there’s the use of electric vehicles. We had three Waymos sent to the area impacted by the rioting. Those are driverless vehicles with lithium-ion batteries. They lit them on fire, and the cars burned. The fire department didn’t go into the riot zone because they need force protection, which wasn’t available to us at the time. But if they were to go in and put water on the fire—which they wouldn’t because they know what they’re doing—that would have created a toxic gas. So that’s a concern. I’m also concerned about a scenario in which someone puts explosives in a vehicle like this, and they’re remotely detonated when the car gets into a crowded area. As technology evolves, we’re going to continue to see things we haven’t seen before. The President mobilized the National Guard and sent them in. It was 2,000 service members, then supplemented them with another 2,000, then he added 700 Marines. It was not clear what exactly their role was going to be. In general terms, it was to support the mission of ICE and the associated agencies. ICE has the FBI, ATF, DEA, and probably others working with them. For force protection, they’re using the military—the National Guard and the Marines. We’ve never seen it work that way before. They were around the federal buildings protecting the facility and the people there from protesters and vandalism and assaults, and they, in turn, are facing assaults standing there. We’re contiguous to them on the city streets, so we try to figure out our role in moving protesters away so they can’t assault the people there. We also have a state law that prohibits us from doing anything in the furtherance of immigration enforcement, so our response is a bit tempered at scenes where they’re arresting people for immigration offenses. We need to be careful to stay within the law as to what we can and can’t do. Wexler: And this is being done under Title 10, meaning ordered by the President, rather than under Title 32, meaning ordered by the governor, correct? Chief McDonnell: Yes, as I mentioned, normally we would go through the procedure for bringing in additional resources, from mobilization to mutual aid to a request for the National Guard. This was done in reverse. It was done by the President’s directive to federalize them and then send them into the city with a mission to support the efforts of the ICE agents and associated agents brought into do immigration enforcement. We’re preparing for Saturday, which is being heavily promoted on social media as a national day of resistance. In addition, on Sunday we have the FIFA soccer Club World Cup, which will draw lots of people to the area. The mayor ordered a curfew beginning Tuesday night, which has been very effective. We’ve made a couple hundred arrests each night since then. But last night [Wednesday] we saw people leaving the curfew zone and doing what they were previously doing here. That necessitates dispersal orders and crowd management. So it’s one challenge after another, and I can’t say enough about our people. Fatigue is certainly an issue. We don’t know how long this will go on. We believe that as long as the ICE enforcement actions go on, there will be issues we have to deal with on the street. So we have to handle this while protecting a city that’s busy under normal conditions, with an understaffed police agency. But it’s a tribute to our men and women that they take on the mission as it comes, do the very best they can, and put themselves between harm and the public. I have so much respect for what I’ve seen this week from our folks.
Chief McDonnell and Sheriff Luna meet with Gov. Gavin Newsom and other local leaders to discuss the protests. Source: X (formerly Twitter) Wexler: Sheriff Luna, how have things been going from your perspective? Sheriff Robert Luna: I want to compliment Jim McDonnell and the LAPD. They have been doing a great job. It’s very frustrating to have the President of the United States sit in the Oval Office and talk about how he saved the officers in L.A. That is frustrating to our front-line troops at both the sheriff’s department and the LAPD. So I want everyone reading this to know that our deputies and police officers are doing amazing work. They’re very good at what they do, and we were on the front lines doing what people expect us to do.
Sheriff Luna surveys the mass demonstrations in Los Angeles County. Source: X (formerly Twitter) ICE is still running active operations at car washes, Home Depots, and restaurants. The news is showing shopping centers that are empty because people are afraid to go out. ICE shared some arrest stats with us yesterday [Wednesday]. They had 330 arrests for the week and only about 30 percent of them were for people with criminal histories. When Chief McDonnell and I talk to our federal partners, we say, “Hey, we’ll help in any way we can to get bad people off the street. But if you’re taking their kids, their grandmothers, and everybody else, you’re going to cause a riot.” We told them that before this started but, to me, it’s not about public safety, it’s about a quota. They have numbers they want to make. On Sunday, I requested, because of the unrest happening, that they pause this until things settle down. I was unequivocally told no. Their attitude is almost like, “You helped cause this, not us. We’re helping make your streets safe.” The tactics being used by the federal authorities are the tactics that a lot of us used 20 or 30 years ago, and have since learned not to use because they inflamed the community. All the years—some would argue decades—that it took us to build public trust is being eroded in these last couple weeks. And I’m worried we’re going to further erode the relationships between local and federal law enforcement at a time when we have the World Cup and Olympics coming up in L.A. This isn’t helping in many ways. Saturday we had unrest in the cities of Paramount and Compton, which both contract the sheriff’s department for policing. We didn’t even know there was an HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] facility in the city of Paramount. Because they had conflict with community members on Friday night in the city of L.A., they had summoned over 100 Border Patrol agents into Paramount. But they never advised us. We got a call from community members that there was a street takeover in the city of Paramount, and about 10 minutes later we got a call for help from HSI saying that their agents were being attacked. Because we had no notice, we only had a handful of deputies working there. They got there and it was an all-out brawl between hundreds of community members and over 100 agents. Jim and I have both been criticized for a lack of response when the feds are doing their operations, but they’re giving us no notice and then expect us to come into an almost-riotous situation with a handful of officers. So it’s been frustrating to listen to them say that either the LAPD or LASD are not supporting them. That couldn’t be further from the truth. We’ve been put in a horrible and, really, an unprecedented situation when it comes to federal, state, and local law enforcement trying to work together. Wexler: Chief McDonnell, how are you communicating with the community through all this? Chief McDonnell: We take every chance we get to talk to the public through the media, tell them the reality of what we’re facing and what we’re trying to do on their behalf. A lot of the political banter back and forth between state and national officials isn’t helping. The officers on the street need one consistent message about the mission and our expectations, so we try to provide that as best we can and take the politics out of it. All we want to do is restore order on our streets and have people feel safe. The perception that this is widespread throughout the city like it was in ’92 is not accurate. It’s roughly one square mile in a city that’s about 500 square miles. It’s very serious, very violent at times, very concerning, and will be very expensive. But it is somewhat isolated. The longer it goes on, the more opportunity there is for those from across the country who want to do damage to come in. We believe some people aligned with anarchist groups are coming in, and they’re at a different level. We have protesters here airing their grievances, and we protect their First Amendment right to do that. But when we have agitators come in and commit criminal acts, that takes it to another level. So we’re dealing with the national and state politics. We’re dealing with our internal morale issues, supporting our people dealing with their fatigue, their injuries, and the threats they’re facing. The challenges are many, but I can’t say enough about the caliber of people we have the privilege to lead. Wexler: Sheriff Luna, do you have any additional thoughts? Sheriff Luna: A big concern is that one of the missions of the National Guard is to accompany these federal agents when they go out into the neighborhoods and basically form an outer perimeter. They’re doing these operations, making a lot of people angry, leaving, and then we have to come in and deal with it. People are asking the cops who work in those neighborhoods why we’re helping. So we’re communicating as best we can. Thus far, the local media is treating us and local law enforcement pretty well and saying positive things about our officers, even when they’re involved in uses of force. I have tried to warn the National Guard that there’s always a villain in a story and, unfortunately for them, our soldiers may become the villains. People are asking me to protect the community from the National Guard and Marines. That’s unprecedented. I love our soldiers. They’re awesome. But there are decisions being made that are putting them in harm’s way. People are not going to back down when they see people in military uniforms and Humvees and rifles. That’s agitating them more. So I’m really praying that no one gets seriously hurt or killed. I asked them who will investigate if one of the soldiers ends up shooting somebody, and they didn’t have an answer for me. I know they’re trying to adjust to the world around them as they deploy, but unfortunately, we have to be prepared for a Kent State–type situation. Thanks to Chief McDonnell and Sheriff Luna for taking the time to share their experiences with our members. I know it’s been a stressful week for them and they have ongoing concerns about public safety in their city and county. As you read this Saturday morning, I know many of you are preparing for demonstrations in your jurisdictions. I hope Chief McDonnell and Sheriff Luna’s lessons from Los Angeles help you protect public safety while allowing community members to exercise their First Amendment rights as you police these demonstrations. Best, Chuck |
