LAPD Chief Denies Trump’s Claim That Police Asked for National Guard Help: ‘We’re Nowhere Near’ That
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell denied on CNN that he asked President Donald Trump for help with the ongoing protests in the city, claiming that the police department was “nowhere near” having to request assistance from the National Guard.
Reacting on Wednesday’s The Source to Trump’s claim that “the police were asking us to come in,” McDonnell said, “No, we were not in a position to request the National Guard.”
He explained, “We have a protocol that we work up through. First, we bring in all internal resources to bear on the issue, whatever it is. Then, we mobilize the department, or part of the department, to be able to get everybody out there dealing with the issue. If we don’t have the capacity at that point to be able to do that, then through the Sheriff we request mutual aid and we get our law enforcement partners from police departments and sheriffs departments throughout the Southern California region to assist us in doing what it is we need to do.”
McDonnell concluded, “We’re at that level now and we’re nowhere near a level where we would be reaching out to the governor for National Guard at this stage, and my hope is that things are going in the right direction now and that we wouldn’t have had to have done that and we won’t either.”
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday evening, Trump said, “What we have is a situation in Los Angeles that was caused by gross incompetence. They didn’t have the police to handle it. The police were asking us to come in. They were very late. We had to go in to save a lot of ICE officers, as you know, who were holed up in a building and they were being attacked, and the military went in, the National Guard went in, they got them. The police weren’t able, unfortunately, to move fast enough, but we moved fast enough.”
He claimed, “If we weren’t there, if we didn’t bring in the National Guard and the Marines, you would probably have a city that was burning to the ground just like it was a number of months ago with the housing. You would’ve had a big problem there if we weren’t there. In fact, the police chief said so much, if you look at what his statements were. He said, ‘We’re very lucky to have had them.'”
Watch above via CNN.
