On Tuesday, as protests over George Floyd’s murder were continuing in the streets of Los Angeles, the L.A. Police Commission met over Zoom, where its members took calls from the city’s citizens for around seven hours. The preceding days had been, let’s call it, tense. The meeting convened a day after the LAPD chief of police, Michel Moore, said that Floyd’s “death is on [protesters’ and looters’] hands as much as it is on those officers.” The meeting took place after he walked back the statement and after Mayor Eric Garcetti forgave him, saying that Moore didn’t “mean it.”
The commission convened following clips circulating on social media and the news for several days, showing cops teargassing protesters during a pandemic and firing rubber bullets at nonviolent protesters walking in the street; officers in riot gear grabbing, pushing, and hitting protesters; and a cop car ramming into pedestrians gathered on the street. The meeting came after the city adopted Garcetti’s budget that dedicated a whopping $1.8 billion to the LAPD.
So one can understand the vitriol of the callers, delivered in all sorts of tones with all sorts of words. But for those in other cities across America, where police are assuming similar militaristic tactics on peaceful protesters but not providing an open forum on Zoom, the taped call, available on YouTube, is also pretty cathartic. It’s comprised of about seven hours of anger, in which you can’t see the Los Angeles citizens calling in, but can see the members of the commission’s faces, including Moore’s. The countdown clock, top left, gives it a kind of game show or sports feel. Make the most impact in 120 seconds or less. What can you get through to these people in two minutes?
Various Twitter users have done the work of picking out and editing down the most succinct and effective speeches, but tuning in at any point usually delivers:
A call to “upgrade your Zoom account with all that fucking money.”
“Racist eyebrows.”
An especially amazing one that the person answering calls had to thank the caller for.
And someone was even identified as “Tony Hawk.” (It was not that Tony Hawk.)
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