A tale of two marches

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LAPD Cmdr. Louis H. Gray Jr. estimated the crowd had swelled to about 3,000 people by 11 a.m. ‘It’s smaller than we anticipated,’ he said. ‘Last year at this time, I’d say there were at least 300,000 to 400,000 people.’ There have been no incidents or arrests, he said.

Gray acknowledged that the police were ‘caught off guard a bit’ when 650,000 marchers showed up in downtown Los Angeles last year. This year, he said, ‘we have sufficient personnel to handle a large crowd.’

At 11:10 a.m., another couple hundred middle and high school students marched up to join the crowd.

-Tami Abdollah