LAPD halts use of some projectile weapons at protests after court ruling

The Los Angeles Police Department has issued an immediate moratorium on the use of certain projectile weapons at protests after city attorneys interpreted a federal court order as precluding their use under current policies, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday. “It’s absolutely telling that we needed a restraining order against the police in order to really just exercise our 1st Amendment rights,” said Melina Abdullah of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, one of several organizations that won the order in an ongoing lawsuit over the LAPD’s response to last year’s mass protests. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall granted a temporary restraining order placing new restrictions on the LAPD’s use of projectile weapons at the request of the activist groups in their lawsuit over the LAPD’s response to last spring’s mass protests. Recent reviews of the LAPD’s handling of last spring’s mass protests found that officers who weren’t properly trained on the weapons had nonetheless used them.