Days into L.A. immigration raid protests, it appears journalists are bearing the brunt of injuries

US President Donald Trump continued to defend his decision on Tuesday to appeal to the national guard and the Marines to repress the demonstrations in Los Angeles, following the previous affirmations that the city would have been “erased” if he had not done so.

This is an unprecedented statement, which has received setbacks of local officials, including the governor of California Gavin Newsom and the mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass. Newsom and Bass, among others, stressed that the demonstrations that started on Friday were mainly in a small section in the city center. (A curfew promulgated on Tuesday covered a 2.5 square kilometers of a city which includes approximately 1,295 square kilometers.)

There has undoubtedly had a wave of violence since the words spread at the end of last week that federal immigration and customs’ application agents (ICE) made raids to find undocumented city residents, with people who had vehicles, vandalizing buildings and looting of companies.

But like the demonstrations near the bar of a week, there were no deaths or deadly injuries known as a result of violence or clashes with the police.

Dozens of journalists struck: defense group

At night, the head of the Los Angeles police department, Jim McDonnell, documented injuries to the officers deployed, confronted with a certain number of projectiles, including, at least on an occasion, a Molotov cocktail. In some cases, the agents had to be treated in the hospital for hours, while others were treated on the scene.

Journalists, with less protective equipment than the police, seem to have been the profession to undergo the most injuries so far.

At least two of the most serious incidents involving journalists have moved away from the city center stage.

The British photojournalist based in the United States Nick Stern was held near some people by waving a Mexican flag 32 kilometers from the city center, on a protest site in Paramount, California, when he was shot down on Saturday. He felt “atrocious pain,” he told CBC News on Tuesday evening of the long Beach Memorial Medical Center, where he recovered an emergency surgery to remove a rubber ball from his thigh.

Stern was unable to judge to find out if he has been intentionally struck, but journalists from the defense group without borders / journalists without borders condemned “A wave of blind violence” against journalists who, according to him, exercise their first amendment for the press to cover the raids and the answer.

The group said that there had been at least 31 attacks on journalists – 27 of the police – since the start of the demonstrations.

The New York Post photographer Toby Canham was overlooking Highway 101 when he was struck by a rubber ball. He spent on Monday at the hospital with a cervical boost and neck pain and left with a red brand on his forehead.

“I understand perfectly to be in the position you could hurt yourself,” said Canham. “But at the same time, there was no justification to target the rifle and press the relaxation, so I’m a little annoyed about this, to be honest.”

On Sunday, a widely broadcast video showed that Australian journalist Lauren Tomasi has shot the leg by a rubber bullet when he reports from the city center. Later, she told her employer 9news that she was safe and unharmed.

Ben Camacho, a journalist from the local website The Southlander, said he was shot dead twice.

“I don’t know what struck me twice, but they hit like a hammer and without immediate warning,” he wrote online. “The elbow is wrapped in gauze and the knee is weak.”

Not all incidents concerned the police. The photographer of the Associated Press Jae Hong was launched and struck by sticks by demonstrators on Monday, his protective equipment allowing him to escape injuries.

Quieter scene on the 1st evening with the curfew

National Guard requests generally come from state governors, but Newsom did not do so.

There are now more than 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 navies deployed in the city, although, by law, they are not supposed to participate in the application of civil laws, and rather support those who are.

Commander responsible said on Wednesday that the national guard troops had already temporarily owned civilians during the demonstrations, but then gave them to the police.

Major-General Scott Sherman, speaking in an interview with the Associated Press and another media, said that even if things have calmed down in Los Angeles, he expects the situation to degenerate.

Sherman is commander of the transmission force 51, which oversees the troops of guard and the navies.

He said that these temporary detentions have been in recent days, and that there was not much recently.

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said the deployment was going to last 60 days, and a Pentagon official said that in the testimony of Capitol Hill, the cost estimated at cost is 134 million US dollars.

History of protests at the

Los Angeles is the site of some of the most important violent demonstrations in the United States since the Second World War. An arrest of a black motorist in Watts in 1965 by white police officers became out of control, and in riots who followed some 34 people, more than 1,000 injured and damage estimated at 40 million US dollars.

In 1992, the president of the time, George HW Bush, employed the insurgency law to ensure a military response to the uprising that occurred in Los Angeles and the surrounding area after four white police officers were acquitted for having beaten the black motorist Rodney King. It was reported that 64 people died, with more than 2,300 people injured and $ 1 billion in estimated damage.

Until now, the current situation in Los Angeles is more comparable to the demonstrations that emerged after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer at the end of May 2020. This fatal interaction was taken on video and triggered a national response in the following months.

While scenes of violence took place in Minneapolis, Portland and Seattle and the murders in Wisconsin and Texas, the Los Angeles region protests in 2020 were silent in comparison,, According to several reports.

Continuous situation

McDonnell, according to Los Angeles Times, told municipal council on Tuesday that 114 people had been arrested the previous night, a total total than in each of the three previous nights.

Bass said she thought she had to answer a “shift” for vandalism on Monday evening, saying that 23 companies had been looted. She said that the curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. would last for several days.

The first reports of the first night with a curfew on Tuesday seem to indicate a quieter scene. The members of the National Guard have watched behind plastic shields, but do not seem to participate in arrests, said AP.

Lots of arrests Tuesday occurred on the highway protest sceneNot in the city center, while others have been cited for violating the curfew. There was no report of serious injuries.

There is no guarantee of what will happen next, but the city officials undoubtedly hope that this will mark a turning point in the intensity of the demonstrations.