California National Guard troops and Los Angeles Police protect Los Angeles City Hall, Sunday, May 31, 2020, during a protest in response to George Floyd’s death. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
By JOSE HERRERA
The Los Angeles City Council on Friday, March 15 approved nearly $9 million to fund training that will guide the LAPD’s response to future mass protests —a reaction to what a report said were the department’s flawed actions during the George Floyd protests of 2020.
Council members voted 8-3 to approve the money, which is intended to improve the LAPD’s use of less-lethal force and situations involving mass arrests, and to ensure First Amendment rights.
The more progressive council members, Nithya Raman, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez, voted against the plan. Council members Paul Krekorian, Bob Blumenfield, Heather Hutt and Curren Price were absent during the vote.
According to an LAPD report, the council had initially approved $8.8 million as part of the budget process in May 2023.
Of the $8.8 million, $4.2 million was to cover personnel salaries, $4 million for overtime and $529,000 for equipment costs.
The salaries will be used to pay officers to lead the training. The overtime will be used pay officers to take training during their off hours, with the department saying it doesn’t want to pull officers away from their duties doing normal hours.
The LAPD said it intends to develop an eight-hour mobile field force course, a four-hour field jail operations course and incident command training.
“The training programs are designed to establish and maintain proficiency for officers to respond to civil unrest occurrences, the use of less-lethal devices and the application of best practices,” according to the LAPD’s report.
“This training reduces the risk of harm and mitigates liability associated with public contracts in unusual occurrences and other large deployments.”
In the summer of 2020, there were widespread protests in Los Angeles and around the country following the death of Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd died after an officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. The officer was later found guilty of murder and sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison.
In 2021, a report commissioned by the L.A. City Council outlined flaws in LAPD’s response to the L.A. protests that followed Floyd’s death.
Key points of the report found LAPD’s command staff didn’t always know who was in charge; so-called “shadow teams,” or teams of undercover officers, caused chaos and gave orders that contradicted those already given to officers; hundreds of people were injured or alleged their rights were violated; and overall, the department implemented ineffective tactics and planned poorly to arrest thousands of protesters without a clear plan for transporting or jailing those rounded up.
