A group of protesters gathered on Saturday at Liberty Park on Wilshire Boulevard to deliver a list of demands to Mayor Karen Bass.
About 30 protesters marched from the park down Wilshire Boulevard to the Getty House where Bass was hosting a gathering of children and parents for a Christmas party. Motorcycle police attempted to keep the march off the street along the way.
The crowd was met by a police line blocking the way to the Getty House, which angered the protesters, however, the demonstration remained peaceful.
The protest was a coalition of different activist groups including 50501 SoCal, Valley Defensa, Human Liberation Coalition, March Chant Repeat and Extinction Rebellion.
The list of demands called for reform and accountability in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
“Los Angeles is at a breaking point. The pattern of excessive force, civil rights violations, and impunity with the Los Angeles Police Department represents a systemic failure of public leadership,” the opening statement of the document read.
The demands called for creating an independent investigative body of police conduct, unpaid suspension for serious misconduct, reform to fiscal responsibility, monthly public misconduct reporting and a transition of leadership in the LAPD. The document further states a consequence of inaction will incur a petition to the California Department of Justice for civil rights intervention and a push to codify these reforms in the state legislature.
The group also called out the Los Angeles City Council’s decision on Friday to provide $1 million in funding to the LAPD’s hiring of new recruits for the next two months.
Protesters stood outside the police line for an hour, talking back and forth with the Mayor’s Chief of Staff Mitch Kamin. Bass eventually agreed to meet with a few protesters and receive the demands outside the Getty House.
“It’s a big win,” Stephen Starr, one of the protesters who handed the demands to the mayor, said. “These demands are practical, not radical. These are reasonable, useful, city-sensitive, human-sensitive demands.”
The group then rallied outside the police line and celebrated getting through to the mayor, leaving the Wilshire neighborhood.
