LAPD Chief: We Don’t Engage in ICE Activity But the Federal Authorities Have the Right to Do What They’re Doing

Reporter: “We have seen two kinds of groups Friday, Saturday and today that I’ve been working: the community that is enraged and they’re not happy with the actions of ICE, and then the community that loots and attacks and destroys our city. What would be your direct message to both groups?”
McDONNELL: “Yeah, to — to the people who are not happy with the fact that ICE is in the — in the community doing what ICE does, you know, it’s — I respect ICE for a being a fellow law enforcement agency. They have their mission, they have their — what they have to do. We don’t engage in that activity, but again, we can’t preclude them from doing that. They have every right to do that. I’d ask people in the community to trust the LAPD, that we’re not there for that purpose, and that if they have something they need us to be able to address, we are there for them. As far as the big picture of what can I recommend they do or not do, that’s something — it’s a federal issue and the federal authorities have the right to be able to do what they’re doing. As far as people are worried about that the violence that we’re seeing, it is — violence that I’ve seen is disgusting. It’s escalated now, since the beginning of this incident. While we saw the first night was bad, what we’ve seen subsequent to that is getting increasingly worse and more violent. Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial-grade fireworks at our officers. That can kill you. And we have adapted our tactics to be able to have a chance to be able to take these people into custody and to be able to hold them accountable. We are overwhelmed as far as the number of people out there engaged in this type of activity, and the type of things that they’re doing, they’ll they’ll take backpacks and the backpack will have a cinder block in it. They have a hammer and they’ll break up the cinder block and use that, pass it around to throw at officers, to throw at cars and throw at other people. We’ve seen people with hammers, and you’ve — you broadcasted, breaking the bollards behind the federal building and taking the rocks, if you will, pieces of concrete and throwing them at officers. We’ve had liquid of who knows what description thrown at officers. There’s no no limit to what they’re — what they’re doing to our officers.”