The city of Los Angeles said it would appeal a recent court order that prevents LAPD officers from targeting members of the press with crowd control weapons.<\/p>\n
The notice of appeal filed Tuesday comes less than a month after U.S. District Judge Hern\u00e1n D. Vera barred the LAPD from using so-called less lethal munitions against journalists and nonviolent protesters. <\/p>\n
Los Angeles police faced multiple allegations of excessive force during protests earlier this year against the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown. <\/p>\n
The case challenging Vera\u2019s injunction will now head to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, with a hearing tentatively set for the middle of November.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles deputy city attorney Shaun Jacobs declined to comment Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for the city of Los Angeles and the Department of Homeland Security previously argued that the judge\u2019s ban was impractical and overly broad. Although police can still use less-lethal weapons to contain unruly demonstrators, the city claimed the rules put officers at risk of hesitating in chaotic situations. <\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t always possible for police to immediately recognize journalists, the city and federal agency argued in court filings.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for journalists involved in the litigation countered that the incidents that led to the injunction were uncalled for.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose aren\u2019t mistakes; those are deliberate,\u201d said Carol Sobel, a longtime civil rights attorney who is part of the plaintiffs\u2019 legal team. \u201cWhat they\u2019re saying to the court is, \u2018We need to be able to violate the law and shoot these people indiscriminately or else it\u2019s gonna be a melee.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
It was hypocritical, she said, for the city to make a similar argument to the federal government \u2014 while arguing for an injunction against the Trump administration\u2019s use of racial profiling in the search of Latinos who lack citizenship status.<\/p>\n
Vera first ordered restrictions in July on the use of 40mm projectile launchers, tear gas, stun grenades and other crowd control weapons at street protests.<\/p>\n
The lawsuits, brought by the Los Angeles Press Club, pointed to scores of video evidence and testimonials suggesting that law enforcement violated their own guidelines and state law by shooting journalists and others in sensitive areas, such as the head, with weapons that launch projectiles the size of a mini soda can at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour. <\/p>\n
Separately, the city is still seeking to undo a 2020 injunction against the use of certain less-lethal weapons during that year\u2019s protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Los Angeles said it would appeal a recent court order that prevents LAPD officers from…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":286066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2451,119390,50653,34024,6616,2961,29170,147249,12846,224,2444,5337,1809,4352,5618,42221,7306,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-286065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-city","11":"tag-crowd-control-weapon","12":"tag-injunction","13":"tag-journalist","14":"tag-judge","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-lapd-officer","17":"tag-lapd-use","18":"tag-lawyer","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-los-angeles-times","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-protest","23":"tag-trump-administration","24":"tag-tuesday","25":"tag-vera","26":"tag-video-evidence","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115337621959190773","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}