A Fair Warning to All: Don’t Disrupt Our City

When delegates converge on Los Angeles in August for the Democratic National Convention, their job will be to define the party’s platform and choose their presidential and vice presidential candidates. Our job will be to ensure the safety and well-being of our city and the visitors and demonstrators who want to peaceably exercise their free speech rights during this convention.

But fair warning to all: The police will get tough when confronted with lawlessness. They will protect against any group intent on shutting down our city.

The vast majority of demonstrators will be orderly and responsible. They have demonstrated their conscientiousness by working closely with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Democratic National Convention Committee to determine the times and routes of their demonstrations.

Unfortunately, there will be other types of demonstrators--a small but significant number of rogue demonstrators, anarchists whose sole intent is violent disruption. They will try to make the police look unnecessarily brutal in counteracting them. These international anarchists have attended training camps where they have learned strategies of destruction and guerrilla tactics. And they communicate their methods of malice over the Internet. Log on to https://www.D2kla.org to see just how determined and organized these anarchists are.

If you watch the videos on the Seattle riots, you will see that the rioters were not angry unionists or environmentalists. They were white, middle-class young adults who coldly and methodically destroyed property with various types of weapons. It was no coincidence that so many of these rioters were swinging tire irons.

What they left in their wake was a great city utterly trashed and an angry community left to clean it up at tremendous cost. Meanwhile, these so-called anarchists returned to their comfortable middle-class homes.

After the Lakers’ victory, Los Angeles suffered relatively minor disturbances compared to other cities whose teams have won national championships. About 200 demonstrators seemed hell-bent on causing mass disruption and violent confrontation. The police countered by using a strategy of restraint and containment. They did not want to escalate the mayhem into riot. They did not want to fuel a small crowd’s anger by putting out minor fires and arresting people for drinking in public and other minor legal violations. This was an unhappy choice, but it worked. There were only 11 or so minor injuries, most of them demonstrators. Regrettably, the images the public saw were of two police cars and a TV van on fire.

The police surely will face larger crowd control and other challenges during the convention. They and other law enforcement agencies will be confronted with demonstrators trained in violence, and the police will have to be tough. The image of a police officer arresting a young person who has been destroying property or injuring people with a tire iron may not play well on television, but there may be no other choice. It is important that city leaders not play into the hands of anarchists. We must not handcuff police in their use of nonlethal weapons, such as rubber bullets and pepper spray, when necessary. Moreover, we must not allow Pershing Square to be used for demonstrations. To anyone with common sense, it is a venue where violence-seeking demonstrators cannot be contained. Sadly, Vice President Al Gore apparently has decided not to stay at the Biltmore Hotel, located across from Pershing Square, because the Secret Service has warned him the area could not be adequately secured.

In the same vein, we cannot tolerate nonviolent civil disobedience, such as the blocking of access to roads or buildings. Those who insist on using such tactics point to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. as their moral examples. Then, like Gandhi and King, they must be prepared to pay stiff fines and face arrest and jail. No exceptions, no favoritism, no privileged fast-tracking through the jail process.

The police department is well trained and well prepared for the Democratic National Convention. Police will continue using a strategy of restraint and containment. They will work with the demonstration groups that want to express their views responsibly. But if more is required, police will act accordingly.

The safety of our residents, our visitors and our businesses, as well as the reputation of our city, demands no less.