Opinion: Don’t armchair quarterback the LAPD’s response to mass anti-Trump protests
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To the editor: The logic of the criticism of the Los Angeles Police Department’s response to the anti-Trump protests in the days after the 2016 election is bizarre at best. At worst, this kind of thinking is damaging to public safety. (“The LAPD arrested 462 people in anti-Trump protests. Only three were criminally charged, Times analysis finds,” Nov. 2)
The suggestion that the few charges compared to the hundreds of arrests somehow means those arrests were unnecessary does not make sense. What are the alternatives when protesters block freeways and major boulevards?
Ask politely to disperse? Useless. Resort to brutal force? Of course not.
Instead of criticism, the LAPD should be applauded for responding to the protests nonviolently. So what if only three people were criminally charged? That seems an appropriate result for those who have a right to protest, but who nevertheless needed to be removed from creating a dangerous situation.
Thomas Wheeler, Palos Verdes Estates
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