The Brief

Los Angeles police officers used more than 1,000 less-lethal munitions and wounded six protesters on June 8, according to a state-mandated report released by the department.

The protests continued, along with the LAPD’s use of crowd control munitions, but the department has missed the deadline for several reports required by state law.

LAPD used less-lethal munitions for crowd control on at least four separate days in June — including the first “No Kings” protest on June 14 — and has not published reports on those incidents.

Court documents identify more than a dozen people who were struck by less-lethal munitions between June 9 and June 14. At least four were hospitalized for their injuries. The LAPD has posted video evidence of officers launching volleys of 40mm rounds and tear gas at protesters, but the only new report of crowd control weapons being used after June 8 is from an incident months later on Oct. 25.

The delay puts the LAPD in violation of Assembly Bill 48, a law that went into effect in 2022 to regulate the use of crowd control weapons like 40mm launchers, pepper balls and tear gas. All agencies that use those weapons for crowd control are required to follow up by reporting the reason the weapons were needed, how many were used and how many injuries they caused. The reports must be posted publicly to the agency’s website within 60 days in most cases, or 90 days if an extension is justified.

In a statement, the LAPD acknowledged that the department is “currently outside the 90-day public posting requirement,” saying the delay “stems from the extraordinary volume and complexity of incidents that occurred during that period.”

The department added that the forms will be posted to their website after internal review.

Hundreds of other California law enforcement agencies do not appear to follow AB 48’s reporting requirements, as LAist reported in September, reflecting what experts said was a lack of enforcement mechanism in the law.

In a statement to LAist, City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez called on the LAPD to produce the reports required by state law.

“As we face federal raids that brutalize our communities without transparency or accountability, the City of LA cannot mirror those same tactics,” the statement said. “We must act with moral clarity and protect our residents by fully complying with disclosure laws.”

Critical Incidents

The LAPD has released video evidence documenting three “critical incidents” in which people were sent to the hospital after less-lethal munitions were used against them.

State law requires law enforcement agencies to release any video recordings of incidents where either a firearm is discharged or use of force leads to serious injury or death. The LAPD posts these videos and written descriptions of the incidents on their website.

Two of the released videos show police officers shooting people in the head with 40mm rounds, though AB 48 bans aiming less-lethal rounds at the head, neck, or any other vital organs. The third shows a protester shot multiple times by less-lethal munitions before he was arrested and taken to the hospital for a fractured finger.

One video shows Marshall Woodruff, an L.A. photographer and filmmaker, get struck in both the arm and the face by less-lethal rounds as LAPD officers let loose dozens of rounds toward protesters on June 14.

In video and written descriptions of the incident, the LAPD claims the crowd began assaulting officers by throwing objects, including rocks and bottles, leading to the use of less-lethal munitions. In body camera footage made public by the department, it appears at least one object was thrown toward the officers from somewhere in the crowd.

Woodruff later told reporters he needed “four or five” hours of surgery to repair damage to his eye.

That same day, police officers shot Jack Kearns in the back of the head as he was running away. The department says in written and video descriptions of the incident that he broke through their skirmish line. Court records filed by the L.A. chapter of Black Lives Matter allege that Kearns was not noticed by police until he was nearly a block away and moving in the opposite direction.

Blood can be seen on the back of Kearns’ baseball cap in the video as he asks officers to call a medic.

Kearns told reporters in June that he suffered brain bleeding and was in the hospital for three days.

A few days earlier, on June 10, Daniel Robert Bill was shot multiple times by less-lethal munitions before he was arrested and taken to the hospital for a fractured finger.

In body camera video released by LAPD, Bill is seen standing still in front of an LAPD skirmish line when officers began to push him back with batons and opened fire with less-lethal launchers.

The police department has been accused of using less-lethal munitions against members of the media after June 8, including the use of a 40mm round that struck Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi on June 9.

A lawsuit by the L.A. Press Corps and news outlet Status Coup has identified 12 members of the media, including Tomasi, who are alleged to have been struck by less-lethal rounds from June 9 through June 14.

None of those incidents have been reported as required by AB 48.

Concerns about potential misuse

The L.A. City Council voted last week to continue allowing the LAPD to use 40mm less-lethal launchers and tear gas.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell argued in council chambers that such weapons are a "de-escalation tool” that reduces the need of the department to use deadly force.

Some civil rights attorneys and other experts have told LAist they believe the LAPD’s use of less-lethal munitions against protesters has gone too far.

Adrienna Wong, a senior staff attorney with ACLU SoCal, told LAist in June that the indiscriminate use of force against protesters that month violated the law and the First Amendment rights of demonstrators.

“We have seen evidence that kinetic projectiles and chemical agents have been used indiscriminately, have injured people that have been protesting peacefully, are journalists or are in a crowd of people, and that seems to violate the express purpose of these laws,” Wong said.

Jeff Wenninger is a former LAPD lieutenant who led a unit that investigated all officer-involved shootings and use-of-force cases from 2013 until his retirement in 2024. He told LAist he thinks the LAPD has been too quick to use less-lethal munitions.

He pointed out that one of the two circumstances where less-lethal force is allowed is in response to a risk of serious bodily injury or death, which is the same as the requirement for lethal force.

The other allowed circumstance, according to AB 48, is to “bring an objectively dangerous and unlawful situation safely and effectively under control.”

Wenninger said the law requires officers to have specific targets when using these weapons, rather than indiscriminately deploying them to disperse crowds.

“ A lot of the articulation and the justification for [less-lethal force] being used tends to suggest to me that law enforcement agencies don't actually really understand the law,” Wenninger told LAist.

Long-term pain

While they are called “less-lethal,” crowd control munitions can cause serious injury or death.

Martin Santoyo has filed a lawsuit against the LAPD for allegedly shooting him in the groin with a 40mm launcher from just feet away.

Santoyo has said in court documents that he was “lawfully exercising his First Amendment right to protest and posed no risk of harm to anyone.” Then, Santoyo claims, an officer intentionally shot him suddenly and without warning “from within several feet.”

He required emergency surgery on his testicles after he was shot, according to court documents, and he said he has endured months of “tremendous physical pain.”

Will Horowitz, a lawyer for Santoyo, told LAist his client needed a month of recovery before he was able to return to work.

The city of L.A. can also expect to feel some fiscal pain when lawsuits alleging misuse of these less-lethal munitions make their way through courtrooms and settlement negotiations.

Santoyo’s civil lawsuit includes accusations of negligence, assault, battery and violations of his constitutional rights. As cases like his mount, so will the potential liability payments that have already been rapidly increasing in recent years.

Employees at the U.S. Education Department who were fired in March got an unexpected email on Friday – telling them to return to work.

These federal workers, including many attorneys, investigate family complaints of discrimination in the nation's schools as part of the department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). They were terminated by the Trump administration in a March reduction-in-force, but the courts intervened, temporarily blocking the department from completing their terminations.

That left 299 OCR employees, roughly half of its staff, in legal and professional limbo – because the department elected to place them on paid administrative leave while the legal battle plays out rather than allow them to work. Court records show 52 have since chosen to leave.

On Friday, an unknown number of the remaining 247 staffers received an email from the department. That email, which was shared with NPR by two people who received it, says that, while the Trump administration will continue its legal battle to downsize the department, "utilizing all OCR employees, including those currently on administrative leave, will bolster and refocus efforts on enforcement activities in a way that serves and benefits parents, students, and families."

Staff were instructed to report to their regional office on Monday, Dec. 15.

In a statement to NPR, Julie Hartman, the department's press secretary for legal affairs, confirmed that the department "will temporarily bring back OCR staff."

"The Department will continue to appeal the persistent and unceasing litigation disputes concerning the Reductions in Force," Hartman wrote, "but in the meantime, it will utilize all employees currently being compensated by American taxpayers."

The department did not clarify how many staffers it was recalling or why it was recalling them now, after keeping them on paid administrative leave for much of the year.

"By blocking OCR staff from doing their jobs, Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow, and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the Department's own making," said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, a union that represents many Education Department employees. "Students, families, and schools have paid the price for this chaos."

The department did not respond to a request to share the current size of OCR's complaint backlog, but one department source who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Trump administration, told NPR that OCR now has about 25,000 pending complaints, including roughly 7,000 open investigations.

Gittleman said the administration's decision to keep these OCR attorneys on paid leave "has already wasted more than $40 million in taxpayer funds— rather than letting them do their jobs."

NPR could not independently verify that cost.

In October, the administration attempted to fire another 137 OCR staffers, though they were reinstated as part of a deal to end the government shutdown.

In all, just 62 employees at OCR have not received a termination notice at some point this year — about 10% of the office's January headcount.

Two days before the department notified staff they were being recalled, NPR reported on the impact these OCR cuts have had on students with disabilities and their families.

Maggie Heilman told NPR that she filed a complaint with OCR in 2024, alleging that her daughter, who has Down syndrome, was denied her right to a free, appropriate public education at school. OCR began investigating in October 2024, but it was disrupted repeatedly by the aforementioned staff cuts. Heilman's case remains one of the roughly 7,000 open investigations.

Of the administration's decision to try to cut many attorneys who protect students' civil rights, Heilman said, "it's telling families with children like [my daughter] that their hurt doesn't matter."

Since Trump took office, public data shows that OCR has reached resolution agreements in 73 cases involving alleged disability discrimination. Compare that to 2024, when OCR resolved 390, or 2017, the year Trump took office during his first term, when OCR reached agreements in more than 1,000 such cases.
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A federal judge has ordered the National Guard to leave Los Angeles and return to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s control in a stern rebuke of the Trump administration’s contention that it can leave troops in the city indefinitely.

The order handed down today goes into effect at noon on Monday.

“It is profoundly un-American to suggest that people peacefully exercising their fundamental right to protest constitute a risk justifying the federalization of military forces,” U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer wrote in the opinion.

The Los Angeles case is one of several challenging Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in liberal cities, including Chicago and Portland. The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing a case on Trump’s call-up of troops to Chicago, which could further determine whether the domestic mobilizations are constitutional.

Breyer in June issued a separate decision against Trump’s Los Angeles deployment, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the ruling from taking effect and allowed the troops to stay.

“Today’s ruling is abundantly clear – the federalization of the National Guard in California is illegal and must end," Newsom said in a written statement. "The president deployed these brave men and women against their own communities, removing them from essential public safety operations. We look forward to all National Guard servicemembers being returned to state service."

The Trump administration used Section 12406 of the U.S. Code to justify sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles in early June, when aggressive immigration enforcement operations led to protests. The administration issued similar orders in August and again in October, each time citing the clause that permits Trump to federalize National Guard troops if “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

In each case, the Trump administration argued that the conditions in Los Angeles in early June justified sending in the National Guard. Trump mobilized 4,000 of the state’s National Guard troops in response to two days of occasionally volatile protests against federal immigration raids in Southern California. Almost all of them have returned home.

Before Trump’s federalization of those troops, at no time in U.S. history was the law invoked without the consent of the state governor. Use of the law is exceedingly rare: It was used just once before June by President Richard Nixon to mobilize troops during a postal worker strike in 1970.

“It defies the record — and common sense — to conclude that risks stemming from protests — in August, October, or even present day — could not have been sufficiently managed without resorting to the National Guard,” wrote Breyer, the brother of retired Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer.

There are three conditions that presidents can use to invoke Section 12406: If the country is invaded or in danger of invasion; if there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the U.S. government; or if the president cannot enforce the nation’s laws with regular forces.

The Trump administration focused on the last one, arguing that previous court rulings found that the president need only be “significantly impeded” from executing the country’s laws, rather than being completely “unable” to execute them, to comply with Section 12406, and argued that the existing risk of further protests justified the continued presence of the National Guard.

Breyer rejected that argument, saying that the mere threat of protests or uprisings compromising the president’s ability to execute the country’s laws is not enough to justify federalization of the National Guard.

“if federalization justified federalization, it would become a positive feedback loop that perpetually rationalized federal control of state troops,” Breyer wrote.

The Trump administration, in its briefings, argued both that the federal mission had succeeded and conditions in Los Angeles had improved, but said the situation still required the presence of National Guard troops.

“Their assertion that ‘[t]here remains an inability to execute the laws . . . in California’ is not only unsupported, but actually borders on a misrepresentation,” Breyer wrote.

Breyer also warned that the Trump administration’s justification for federalizing National Guard troops, if allowed to proceed, would set a dangerous precedent.

The Trump administration “confirmed their position that, after an initial federalization, all extensions of federalization orders are utterly unreviewable, forever,” Breyer wrote.

“That is shocking. Adopting Defendants’ interpretation of Section 12406 would permit a president to create a perpetual police force comprised of state troops, so long as they were first federalized lawfully.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.