KTLA

Business owners say police focused on L.A. protests while ignoring looting

A man walks past a defaced LAPD vehicle in the Fairfax District, an area damaged during civil unrest, following demonstrations in response to George Floyd’s death on May 31, 2020, in Los Angeles. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Aaron Landy watched for hours on Saturday night as people on foot and then in cars moved up and down Melrose Avenue looting stores and setting them on fire, doing wheelies in the street and tagging walls with graffiti.

All the while, not a single police cruiser rolled by, Landy said, even though officers were staged in huge numbers not far away, squaring off with protesters.

Landy’s longtime Fairfax neighborhood, it seemed to him, had been completely abandoned to lawlessness.

“Where are the police? They’re nowhere. There’s not a policeman in sight. It’s just like a free-for-all,” Landy remembered thinking. “It was just shocking. I was outraged.”

Read the full story at LATimes.com.