Letters to the Editor: Protests around L.A. Metropolitan Detention Center are affecting those inside, too

To the editor: This recent article detailed how the city’s response to protests drains public coffers (“L.A. immigration protest costs reach nearly $20 million for police and city repairs,” June 16). So far, media coverage has ignored how the battle between protesters and law enforcement affects those of us locked up in the Metropolitan Detention Center. Because MDC L.A. is located at the heart of the protests, I’ve watched them out the window of my cell.

For more than a week, we’ve been on lockdown, which means no commissary, programming or exercise, and severely limited phone time. My own release date is approaching, but overburdened MDC staff can’t, for example, help me prepare for reentry by securing placement in transitional housing. I’m terrified that I will be left homeless.

When considering the protests and police response, please keep in mind how they make our imprisonment even more painful and our post-release prospects even worse.

Andrew Goltz, Los Angeles

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To the editor: As an American citizen, it is a duty and an honor to participate in nonviolent protest when the government violates our constitutional and human rights. That’s why I participated in the “No Kings” demonstrations in downtown L.A. and Pasadena on June 14. What I witnessed were massive crowds of passionate, diverse marchers who raised our banners and our voices against Donald Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their unwarranted roundup and arrests of workers, students and families. There was very little criminal activity reported, and there was a vast contingent of police and security.

Staff writer Dakota Smith’s article reported a cost of some $20 million dollars due to the protest in L.A., with most of the cost racked up by the Los Angeles Police Department, primarily for overtime pay. At the same time, on the other side of the country, a military parade hosted by Trump on his 79th birthday cost taxpayers an estimated $25 million to $45 million and saw low attendance. It seems that a nonviolent march for human rights is a bargain compared to a useless, arrogant show of power.

John C. Wood, Pasadena