At midday on Tuesday, L.A. County announced another night of curfew. The City of Angels soon followed by extending its own lockdown order in response to unrest following widespread protests over the killing of George Floyd.
Those curfews will last from 6 pm on Tuesday until 6 am on Wednesday. This is the fourth night in a row that the streets of America’s second largest city will go quiet, at least in theory.
County supervisors, in concert with the sheriff, have amended the curfew order each day for the past two days extending the lockdown another 24 hours each time.
Asked on Tuesday if he would extend the curfew for a week, as some other cities have, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said, “No, for me it’s day to day. My hope in my heart is that every day we won’t need it.”
L.A. County’s top law enforcement official didn’t see it that way, however.
In a live interview on KTLA5 on Tuesday afternoon, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said, “The curfew will continue on a daily basis until the organized protests are gone. Because, unfortunately, the looters and the organized criminal element that’s embedded within the looting, they’re taking advantage of that situation. So as long as that cover still exists, we have to continue the curfew. But it’s two different groups: We have the protesters, who are legitimately doing a good job, and then we have the looter crowd. So we’re definitely trying to separate the two.”