Twilight's Last Gleaming

Photo courtesy of David Crane / Los Angeles Daily News

Things kicked off yesterday around 3PM.  The crowd did assemble at the Van Nuys court house (it had earlier been cancelled on social media), and the looting began all within about a mile from my apartment.  The LAPD actually funneled protestors north away from my street.  The fear was that the crowd would go south and begin looting small shops and businesses along Ventura Boulevard.  I had gone out earlier and drove that boulevard and knew that many of them had already boarded up their windows and doors, but with the way looters rampaged through other parts of the city over the weekend, I wondered if any business, boarded up or not, could withstand a crowd bent on destruction.

The news stand at the major intersection of Ventura and Laurel Canyon Boulevards was still open.  The clerk told me he could not close since they were a 24 hour business.  He had been there manning the register over the weekend and said there was some spot looting in the surrounding streets, but the thugs did not get very far.  He was hoping to avoid problems going forward but was by no means certain that he would be that lucky once darkness fell.

As the crowds increased back at the court house, LAPD struggled to control the situation with police and news helicopters hovering overhead; the racket only added to the tension.  More looters were arrested, and several who ran from police were chased down and zip-tied.  While the getaway driver circled the block, two or three suspects would get out of the car and run through broken windows and doors to grab whatever they could and then meet up with the car again outside and speed away.  Then they would find another target and repeat the process.  The looters focused on pharmacies and drug stores like Rite-Aid and CVS as well as Target stores.  They broke windows and doors with hammers and baseball bats.  They also hit shoe stores, as we saw over the weekend in the Fairfax District and Santa Monica.  Jewelry stores were also not exempt, even if most valuables were stored in a vault or safe (over the weekend, looters were caught on news footage wheeling out the safe to a waiting getaway car).

Many business owners, neighbors, and even protestors tried to intervene to prevent the looting.  A father and son, owners of a liquor store on Van Nuys Boulevard, both carried shotguns to protect their business.  They were joined by customers who lived in the area, many of whom had shopped there for years and were the beneficiaries of the owners’ generosity if they could not pay for necessities like diapers and milk.  When the looters came, this ragtag defense force stood their ground.  The looters fled when the group flagged down a passing LAPD platoon in a dozen squad cars, but the officers immediately handcuffed the neighbors who were black and unarmed and were helping to protect the store.  The father and son owners, who were white and carrying the guns, were ignored by the officers.  It took a lot of time for a news crew, who filmed the entire incident, and the owners, to convince police to let the innocent neighbors go.

The attacks on journalists and members of the press continued here and across the nation.  Many suffered serious injuries at the hands of law enforcement.  Why this is considered acceptable is unclear, but it is most certainly an attack on the freedom of the press to tell the story.

Award-winning Los Angeles Times photographer Carolyn Cole was shot in the face with pepper spray and suffered damage to her cornea while documenting the protests in Minneapolis.  Her work has taken her all over the world, often to countries and regions soaked in blood and rife with violence yet it is here on the streets of America where she suffered her worst injury.

Trump, speaking in the White House rose garden with the split screen of exploding tear gas canisters and flash bang grenades in Lafayette Park across the street, made sure to mention the importance of the Second Amendment as if more guns are needed in this volatile situation.

By the time Trump finished speaking, law enforcement had cleared Lafayette Park so he could have a photo-op with a Bible in front of a boarded up church across the street from the White House.  This was immediately after he claimed to be on the side of peaceful protestors who had just been gassed to force them away so he could take his stroll.  He also promised to use American military personnel to take over American city streets to enforce law and order because, as he put it, the governors and mayors were too “weak” to get the job done.  This, in fact, may be unconstitutional and would face resistance from governors and mayors who in many cases have already summoned the National Guard.

It is also difficult not to be cynical about those law enforcement officers who paused to “take a knee” with protestors in solidarity.  Once the moment was over, it was back to flash bang grenades and the searing burn of tear gas.  It will take a lot more than condescension to convince Americans that police reform is coming to provide relief to those most victimized by overly aggressive police officers.  With cops dressed like the military carrying military-grade hardware now joined by National Guard personnel, our country is under siege and our American way of life is in jeopardy both from those who enforce the law and those bent not on protest but on destruction.