McDonnell

The chief spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department has resigned amid accusations from the region’s top federal prosecutor that her office was leaking information, according to three sources familiar with the matter but not cleared to speak publicly.

Jennifer Forkish, the LAPD’s public information director, said she left the department Thursday at the request of Chief Jim McDonnell but vehemently denied making any unauthorized disclosures.

“Any suggestion that I have ever shared or leaked information to the media is categorically false,” she said in a statement. “No one in the Department, including the Chief has ever raised or discussed this baseless allegation with me, because it simply never happened. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

The three law enforcement sources said the chief’s concerns about Forkish’s overall performance had been mounting, and that pressure Tuesday from acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli may have prompted her ouster.

The drama began the prior evening after a Times reporter reached out to an official at the U.S. Attorney’s office to inquire about plans to schedule a news conference related to the Palisades fire.

Flanked by McDonnell and other law enforcement leaders, Essayli announced at a briefing on Wednesday that authorities had arrested and charged a 29-year-old Uber driver with intentionally sparking one of the most destructive fires in California history.

Before the media event, according to the three sources who had been briefed on the matter, Essayli called LAPD senior staff and demanded to know who in the department had tipped the paper off to the news conference, which had not yet been officially scheduled when The Times asked about it.

It wasn’t immediately clear why Forkish was suspected of revealing details about the news conference, which federal authorities announced to members of the media via email at 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Forkish had already left work that afternoon when McDonnell summoned her back to his office at LAPD headquarters for a meeting with him and Assistant Chief Dominic Choi, she told The Times. McDonnell did not reference a call with Essayli during the meeting, telling Forkish only that he did not share her long-term vision for the department’s public relations strategy, she said.

She said the conversation revolved around the difference of opinion about the department’s overall media strategy, adding “there has never been any conversation with me regarding the possibility of a leak with anyone from the LAPD.”

Choi would not address any phone conversation between LAPD leadership and Essayli. He told The Times he could not discuss Forkish’s case due to confidentiality around personnel matters but confirmed she submitted her letter of resignation on Thursday morning.

“We don’t wish any ill will or anything for her,” he said in a brief telephone interview. “We thank her for her service and everything she’s done and for her time with the department.”

McDonnell did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment on Thursday. Inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s office and Mayor Karen Bass also went unreturned.

Forkish expressed gratitude for her time with the LAPD.

“After much thought, I’ve decided to step down from my role to pursue new opportunities,” she wrote in a statement. “I do so with immense pride in what my team and I accomplished together. We told the hard stories with honesty and balance, supported our officers and our city in moments of crisis, and built a foundation of professionalism that I’ll always be proud of.”

For months, word has circulated in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles that Essayli — a Trump appointee — is trying to root out leaks to the media. The LAPD has itself routinely opened investigations into employees who speak with journalists without authorization, and faced lawsuits from employees who claimed they were falsely accused of leaks.

Forkish began her career working for former Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine, who worked as an LAPD cop for more than three decades before going into politics. She later had stints at PR firms around town, including GCG Rose & Kindel, where she worked with Celine Cordero, the future mayor’s deputy chief of staff.

After working as a vice president of corporate communications for casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp. in Las Vegas, Forkish served as a spokesperson for former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón for several months in 2024.

Eric Rose, a partner at the lobbying and crisis communication firm EKA, where he was once Forkish’s boss, said she has made a positive mark at every stop of her career.

“Jennifer is an accomplished public affairs professional with deep and diverse expertise, having worked with elected officials at the local, state and federal levels for more than two decades,” he said.

But Forkish’s appointment to the LAPD job was not without controversy. Multiple department sources not authorized to speak publicly said a dispute over Forkish’s salary demands created tension before she started on the job. Then, the sources, said there was a disagreement over strategy between Forkish and her predecessor, Capt. Kelly Muniz, which ended with Muniz’s transfer to another unit.

Some press advocates say McDonnell’s tenure has been marked by conflict with the local media. The department faces lawsuits for aggressive behavior by officers toward journalists who covered protests against the Trump administration over the summer, and a federal judge has barred police from targeting reporters with less-lethal projectiles during demonstrations.

Adam Rose, a deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the department has in recent months been frustratingly unresponsive when confronted with reports of abuses by officers.

“While I often vehemently disagreed with past PIOs and past department leadership, at least they were responsive,” Rose said. “The fact that McDonnell and his staff are so recalcitrant — and are so reluctant — to do their jobs is shameful.”

In her statement, Forkish said she is proud of her time at the LAPD.

“I’ve always approached this work with transparency, respect, and accountability, and that will never change,” she said.

Times staff writers James Queally and Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

After Los Angeles police officers shot at people on three consecutive days late last month, the LAPD’s civilian bosses turned to Chief Jim McDonnell for an explanation.

The Police Commission wanted to know: What more could the department be doing to keep officers from opening fire?

But in his response at the panel’s meeting last week, McDonnell seemed to bristle at the notion his officers were too trigger-happy.

“I think what we’re seeing is an uptick in the willingness of criminals within the community to assault officers head-on,” he said at the Aug. 26 meeting. “And then officers respond with what they have to do in order to control it.”

The commission has heaped praise on McDonnell for his performance since taking over the department in November. But the exchange over the recent cluster of police shootings — part of an overall increase that has seen officers open fire in 31 incidents this year, up from 20 at the same point in 2024 — marked a rare point of contention.

Commission Vice President Rasha Gerges Shields told the chief that she and her colleagues remained “troubled by the dealings of people both with edged weapons — knives, other things like that — and also those who are in the midst of a mental health crisis.”

During a radio appearance earlier this year, the chief brushed aside questions about shootings, saying officers are often put into dangerous situations where they have no choice but to open fire in order to protect themselves or the public.

“That is something that’s part of the job unfortunately,” he said. “It’s largely out of the control of the officer and the department as far as exposure to those types of threats.”

Such remarks have left some longtime observers worried that the department is backsliding to the days when department leaders tolerated pervasive and excessive use of force. McDonnell’s defense of aggressive tactics during this summer’s pro-immigration protests, critics argue, sends a dangerous message to the rank-and-file.

The LAPD sits at a “pivotal” crossroads, according to Jorja Leap, a professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The federal consent decree that followed the Rampart gang scandal of the late 1990s pushed the LAPD into becoming a more transparent and accountable agency, whose leaders accepted community buy-in as essential to their mission, said Leap.

Out of the reforms that followed came its signature outreach program, the Community Safety Partnership, which eschews arrests in favor of bringing officers together with residents to solve problems at some of the city’s most troubled housing projects.

Leap said support for the program has in recent years started to wane, despite research showing the approach has helped drive down crime. “The LAPD has now evolved into an inward-facing organization,” she said.

McDonnell was not available for an interview this week, an LAPD spokeswoman said.

Others faulted the chief for his response to the Trump administration’s immigration raids in Southern California, taking issue with the local police presence at federal operations and the aggressive actions of LAPD officers toward protesters and journalists during demonstrations in June.

Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said McDonnell seems unwilling to acknowledge how the sight of riot-gear-clad officers holding off protesters created the impression that police were “protecting the feds and the buildings more than the residents of L.A. who pay for LAPD.”

McDonnell has repeatedly defended his department’s response, telling reporters earlier this year that officers were forced to step in to quell “direct response to immediate, credible threats.”

He also issued an internal memo voicing his support to officers in the Latino-majority department and acknowledging the mixed feelings that some may have about the immigration raids.

After his public swearing-in in November, McDonnell acknowledged how much had changed with the department since he left in 2010, while saying that “my perspective is much broader and wider, realizing that we are not going to be successful unless we work very closely with the community.”

At the time, his appointment was viewed with surprise in local political circles, where some questioned why a progressive mayor with a community organizing background like Karen Bass would hitch her fortunes to a law-and-order chief. Others argued that McDonnell was an appealing choice: A respected LAPD veteran who also served as the chief in Long Beach and later as Los Angeles County sheriff.

After numerous scandals in recent years, McDonnell’s selection for the job was widely seen as offering stability while the city prepared for the massive security challenges of the upcoming World Cup and Olympic Games.

With an earnest, restrained manner, McDonnell has won over some inside the department who were put off by his predecessor Michel Moore’s micromanaging leadership style. After his much-publicized union battles during his tenure as sheriff, McDonnell has courted the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League by putting new focus on police hiring and promising to overhaul the department’s controversial disciplinary system.

By some measures, McDonnell has also delivered results for Bass. Violent crime numbers continue to drop, with homicides on pace for 50-year lows.

But the two leaders have taken starkly different positions on the White House’s indiscriminate raids and deployment of National Guard troops.

McDonnell took heat during a City Council hearing in June when he described federal law enforcement officers participating in immigration operations as “our partners.”

Andrés Dae Keun Kwon, policy counsel and senior organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that McDonnell’s record on immigration was one of the reasons the ACLU opposed his selection as chief. Since then, Kwon said, the chief seems out of touch with the message of Bass and other local leaders rallying around the city’s immigrants.

“Given that we’re three months into this Trump regime siege of Los Angeles you’d think that the leader of this police department” would be more responsive to the community’s needs, Kwon said.

In a statement, Clara Karger, a spokeswoman for Bass, said that “each leader has a different role to play in protecting Angelenos and all agree that these indiscriminate raids are having devastating consequences for our city,” she said.

McDonnell’s relationship with the Police Commission has been cordial, but several department insiders — who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose private discussions — said that behind the scenes some commissioners have started to second-guess the chief’s handling of disciplinary cases.

The tensions were evident at the recent meeting when the issue of officer shootings led to a public dressing-down of the chief.

Echoing the frustrations of LAPD critics who flood the commission’s meetings on a weekly basis, board members questioned how it was possible that officers needed to fire their weapons on back-to-back-to-back days last month.

Commissioner Fabian Garcia called the three shootings “a lot.”

He and his colleagues told McDonnell they expected the LAPD to present a report on the shootings at a future meeting.

McDonnell responded, “Great, thank you,” before launching into his regular crime and staffing updates.

In his first major shake-up since taking over the Los Angeles Police Department in November, Chief Jim McDonnell has given new assignments to more than a dozen officials from the upper ranks.

Faced with ongoing struggles to woo new recruits and uncertainty around his plans to overhaul the LAPD, McDonnell gave the first indications about how he intends to reorganize by elevating three deputy chiefs — Emada Tingirides, Michael Rimkunas and Scott Harrelson — to top positions and resurrecting a long-dormant bureau.

The moves were announced in a departmentwide email last week but aren’t expected to take effect until later this month.

Tingirides, who lost out to McDonnell in a bid to become chief last fall, becomes assistant chief in charge of the Office of Operations, which oversees patrol functions. She was recently announced as a finalist for the same job in Fort Worth, according to local news reports. Her recent promotion is seen by some inside the department as a move to convince her to stay. She becomes the highest-ranking Black woman in the department’s history.

Harrelson will now be in charge of the department’s training and recruitment efforts as the head of the Office of Support Services, replacing Assistant Chief Daniel Randolph, who is expected to retire in the coming weeks.

Filling out McDonnell’s inner circle are two other holdovers from the administration of former Chief Michel Moore: Rimkunas and Dominic Choi, who served as interim chief until McDonnell took over in November. Choi remained an assistant chief but was named McDonnell’s chief of staff — in effect the department’s No. 2.

The head of the bureau that includes internal affairs, Rimkunas will now run the Office of Special Operations.

McDonnell also resurrected the department’s Human Resources Bureau, which was shut down in 2004 when McDonnell he was a senior official under former Chief William J. Bratton. He didn’t immediately say what the new bureau’s responsibilities will be.

It’s unclear whether McDonnell will have to submit parts of his reorganization plan to the City Council, which in the past has had to sign off on changes to the department’s structure.

When he took the job last year, McDonnell initially said he wanted to spend at least three months studying the LAPD to understand how it had changed since he came up through the ranks. He left in 2010 to become the top cop in Long Beach, then served a term as L.A. County sheriff. His early review timeline was thrown off, he told reporters at a news conference last week, because of the fires in January and the recent protests over federal immigration raids.

The series of major incidents, McDonnell said, presented an unexpected opportunity to evaluate his senior staff to see how they performed “in crisis mode.”

The chief added that he had delayed his realignment for the “outcome of the budget to see where we were” and the completion of a monthslong study of the department by Rand Corp., a global policy think tank brought in last year to conduct a top-down review. The study was recently finished, and McDonnell said he was reviewing its recommendations, as well as those made by the numerous internal working groups he had convened to look at recruitment, discipline and other workplace issues.

Without offering details, McDonnell hinted that another one of his priorities will be beefing up the department’s detective ranks and overhauling the system that handles misconduct complaints against officers, long a source of controversy and frustration.

“I have in rough form what I think it could look like, but I certainly want to get the input from those who are dealing with it on a day-to-day basis on how do we best deal with the nuances of doing the job today with the number of resources that we have,” he told reporters.

McDonnell has come under growing pressure from critics who have said he is moving too slowly to make changes, with more urgency required as the city gets ready to host events such as the next year’s World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Games.

In other personnel moves announced last week, McDonnell moved Deputy Chief Marc Reina from the Training Bureau to South Bureau, where he previously worked as captain, and promoted German Hurtado, the department’s immigration coordinator, to deputy chief over Central Bureau, which has been the epicenter of recent protests.

Hurtado has been named in at least two pending lawsuits by LAPD officials accusing him of covering up unjustified uses of force by officers during the 2020 protests. The city has denied wrongdoing and is fighting the cases in court.

“As far as I know, I’m only named as a witness in those cases, and I’m not at liberty to talk about ongoing lawsuits,” Hurtado said when reached Monday by The Times.

McDonnell also demoted Assistant Chief Blake Chow to his civil service rank of commander — a similar trajectory to McDonnell, who was made to drop a rank during the tenure of former Chief Charlie Beck. Capt. Ray Valois, who helped oversee the department’s response to the Palisades fire, was elevated to commander in the Valley Bureau.

Pacific Palisades will reopen to the general public Saturday, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell told The Times Friday afternoon.

The affluent coastal enclave has remained closed to the public since the devastating January wildfires, months after other fire-damaged neighborhoods reopened. Access to the neighborhood was limited to residents and workers with passes. Dozens of LAPD officers have been staffing 16 checkpoints on major streets into the community, according to the mayor’s office.

Those checkpoints will no longer be staffed as of Saturday, but there “will still be a heavy police presence for the foreseeable future there,” McDonnell said.

The decision was made in conjunction with Mayor Karen Bass, with input from members of the community, McDonnell said. Bass did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city is bracing for widespread demonstrations against the Trump administration on Saturday that will include a heavy law enforcement presence. The need to shift personnel to other parts of the city ahead of the protests was “a factor” in McDonnell’s decision, but he said it was also a necessary evolution months after the fires.

The status of the checkpoints will be reassessed after this weekend, LAPD spokesperson Jennifer Forkish said.

While publicly chastising groups protesting immigration raids, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell has offered support to officers in his Latino-majority department who may have mixed feelings about the Trump administration‘s crackdown.

In a department-wide missive sent out earlier this week as protests ramped up, McDonnell acknowledged some officers were “facing criticism from the community or wrestling with the personal impact,” of recent events and needed support.

“When federal immigration enforcement actions take place in communities that may reflect your own heritage, neighborhoods, or even your family’s story, it can create a deep and painful conflict,” he wrote. “You may be wearing the uniform and fulfilling your duty, but inside, you’re asked to hold a complex mix of emotions.”

It was an unusual display of solidarity for a chief who has rarely waded into the contentious immigration debate. McDonnell has bristled over criticism about his relationship with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while serving as Los Angeles County Sheriff during Trump’s first term.

In interviews and public comments since becoming chief McDonnell has sought to distance himself from a policy as sheriff that allowed federal immigration authorities to operate freely, targeting people for deportation in the nation’s largest jail system.

Both McDonnell and current L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna have stressed that their departments do not cooperate with federal authorities solely for immigration purposes — polices adopted long ago to help build trust within the city’s diverse communities.

In his own message to his department this week, Luna thanked deputies for their “professionalism, resolve, and unwavering dedication” — but only briefly alluded to the immigration debate.

“Despite the complexity of this situation — made even more challenging by the heightened political environment — I trust and fully expect that you will continue to demonstrate the same level of excellence, thoughtfulness, and integrity that have brought us this far,” Luna said.

Critics of local law enforcement actions in recent days note that racial bias also remains a contentious issue, with LAPD officers pulling over and shooting Latino Angelenos at a higher rate than their share of the overall population.

Jim McDonnell was introduced by Mayor Karen Bass to serve as the new Chief LAPD during a press conference at City Hall on Oct. 4, 2024.

(Ringo Chiu/For The Times)

When asked about how he is working to keep the city’s immigrant population safe, McDonnell often cites Special Order 40, the landmark policy adopted in 1979 that forbids LAPD officers from stopping people to inquire about their citizenship status.

But Trump’s actions have put the chief and other local leaders in the awkward position of having to defend federal officers and property — while also trying to communicate that they are not on the side of immigration agents.

In his recent message to department employees, McDonnell said he recognized they “may feel loyalty, frustration, fear, or sometimes even shame as the community mistakenly views you as part of something that you are not.” The public may not “see the nuance,” of the LAPD’s postion, he said, because “simply being present can make it seem like you support an action you may not agree with, or that you’re complicit in pain affecting your own community.”

Publicly, though, the chief has struck a different, sometimes defensive tone, often focusing his remarks on destruction caused by some protesters.

At a City Council hearing Tuesday, he sparred with city leaders who challenged the department’s relationship with federal authorities.

In one exchange, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he disagreed with the chief on referring to agencies such as ICE as “law enforcement partners.”

“I don’t care what badge they have on or whose orders they’re under. They’re not our partners,” Harris-Dawson said.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, who sits on the Council’s public safety committee and represents an Echo Park-to-Hollywood district, said in a statement to The Times that he wasn’t surprised that Latino police officers may be feeling conflicted.

“Families are being ripped apart, and I’d bet nearly every one of them has a parent or relative who’s undocumented, or were even undocumented themselves at some point,” said Soto-Martinez.

Art Placencia, a retired LAPD detective, recalled being a young cop on the job in the years when cops would arrest Latinos simply because they believed that they might be in the country illegally and deliver them into federal custody.

The LAPD of today is vastly different than when he was on the job, he said. Prodded by lawsuits and consent decrees, the once-mostly white department has grown to become more than half Latino, which more or less mirrors the city’s demographics. And while Latino officials are under-represented in the LAPD’s upper echelons, they wield more political clout than ever, Placencia said.

Placencia, the former president of an prominent association for Latino officers that once sued the LAPD for discrimination in promotion decisions, said McDonnell is caught in a bind of having to navigate the city’s left-leaning politics while also backing up his rank-and-file officers on the front lines against hostile crowds.

“He’s gotta show that he’s concerned about the officers and their feelings,” said Placencia. “They’re the ones that are out there, they’re the ones that are getting rocks thrown at them.”

In past interviews, McDonnell has spoken proudly about his immigrant upbringing — both of his parents moved to Boston from Ireland a year before he was born — saying that he understands the struggle of trying to make a better life in America. But as sheriff he also came under fire by breaking ranks with many other area politicians by opposing a “sanctuary state” bill that sought to prevent federal immigration agents from taking custody of people being released from California jails.

The selection of McDonnell last November came as a disappointment among some within the department, who had hoped Bass would pick Robert Arcos, a third-generation Mexican American, who had the backing of some powerful Latino civic leaders and would have been the first Latino chief of a city that is more than 50% Latino.

Ruben Lopez, a retired LAPD SWAT lieutenant, said he appreciated that McDonnell decided to address the internal moral dilemma that some officers face.

Lopez remembers wrestling with similar feelings when, as a young cop, he was on the front lines of a massive protest over Proposition 187, a controversial law — later struck down by a federal court — that barred undocumented immigrants from receiving public school educations and a range of other state- and county-funded benefits.

“I remember some of the command staff wanted to be more aggressive, and I felt these were just families and kids wanting to exercise their right to protest,” he said. “Because if we don’t have that trust in the community, including immigrant communities then we’re not going to get that collaborative approach to police a city of this size.”

Times staff writer Connor Sheets contributed reporting.

Los Angeles city councilmembers sparred with Police Chief Jim McDonnell Tuesday over the LAPD’s handling of protests against President Trump’s immigration crackdown, with some challenging the department’s relationship with its federal counterparts.

The chief appeared before the council to discuss the LAPD’s attempts to control the protests that have erupted mostly in downtown Los Angeles every day since Friday, sometimes descending into chaos.

Mayor Karen Bass and other local officials have decried both the federal immigration raids that prompted the protests and the vandalism and violence that have broken out at some protests. Over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s objections, the Trump administration has sent the National Guard and Marines to L.A., which Bass lambasted as unnecessary. She said Tuesday that she is considering a curfew for downtown L.A., as the protests showed no sign of abating and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military deployments would last at least 60 days.

McDonnell told the City Council that his officers arrested 114 people at protests Monday night — 53 for failure to disperse and 15 for looting. One person was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon on an officer and another was arrested for attempted murder. The LAPD arrested 27 people at protests on Saturday and 40 on Sunday.

In the testiest exchange of the afternoon, Councilmember Imelda Padilla asked the chief if the LAPD would consider warning city officials if it hears from federal law enforcement that immigration raids are coming.

“You’re asking me to warn you about an enforcement action being taken by another agency before it happens? We can’t do that,” McDonnell responded, noting that such a warning would amount to obstruction of justice.

“That would be completely inappropriate and illegal,” he said.

City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he disagreed with the chief on referring to agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “law enforcement partners.”

“If we know somebody is coming here to do warrantless abductions of the residents of this city, those are not our partners,” he said. “I don’t care what badge they have on or whose orders they’re under. They’re not our partners.”

In an interview after the meeting, McDonnell said his department must continue to cooperate with federal agencies on issues other than immigration enforcement. Since 1979, the LAPD has taken a strong stance against enforcing federal immigration law, prohibiting its officers from initiating contact with anyone for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status.

“All of the crimes we investigate, potentially could be in partnership with [federal agencies],” McDonnell said. “It is a partnership, and without that partnership, we wouldn’t be able to go into the World Cup, the Olympics … that require that we work with federal, state and local partners.”

Other councilmembers took aim at the chief over his officers’ shooting of rubber bullets during the protests.

“To see a reporter get shot with a rubber bullet … on live television does not add to the de-escalation,” said Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, referring to an Australian reporter who was shot during a protest on Sunday. “We have to be mindful of the tactics being used by some LAPD members that is adding to the escalation.”

“Just like a few protesters can take away from the messaging, the same thing can be said about LAPD. It overshadows the response,” he added.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said that some LAPD officers acted “out of line for the situation.”

“I have lawyers posting videos of them getting shot,” she said. “I’ve seen videos of non-lethals being fired at protesters more than 50 yards away.”

McDonnell replied that the LAPD is the best department in the country at holding its officers’ accountable for their actions. But he said he couldn’t speak about specific uses of force by his officers at the protests, since the situation was still developing.

On Tuesday, City Councilmembers Tim McOsker, Ysabel Jurado and Eunisses Hernandez signed a proposal asking various city agencies to provide information on the security infrastructure to “prevent unlawful entry by federal entities” at City Hall, council offices, public service counters, city-owned parking lots and other facilities.

“As this Federal political theater plays out, the safety of City facilities must be given special consideration for the sake of both City employees and the public,” the proposal said.

The crowd near Los Angeles City Hall had by Sunday evening reached an uneasy detente with a line of grim-faced police officers.

The LAPD officers gripped “less lethal” riot guns, which fire foam rounds that leave red welts and ugly bruises on anyone they hit. Demonstrators massed in downtown Los Angeles for the third straight day. Some were there to protest federal immigration sweeps across the county — others appeared set on wreaking havoc.

Several young men crept through the crowd, hunched over and hiding something in their hands. They reached the front line and hurled eggs at the officers, who fired into the fleeing crowd with riot guns.

LAPD officers stage on Los Angeles Street.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Jonas March, who was filming the protests as an independent journalist, dropped to the floor and tried to army-crawl away.

“As soon as I stood up, they shot me in the a—,” the 21-year-old said.

Violence and widespread property damage at protests in downtown L.A. have diverted public attention away from the focus of the demonstrations — large-scale immigration sweeps in such predominantly Latino cities as Paramount, Huntington Park and Whittier.

Instead, the unrest has trained attention on a narrow slice of the region — the civic core of Los Angeles — where protests have devolved into clashes with police and made-for-TV scenes of chaos: Waymo taxis on fire. Vandals defacing city buildings with anti-police graffiti. Masked men lobbing chunks of concrete at California Highway Patrol officers keeping protesters off the 101 Freeway.

A person lobs a large rock at CHP officers stationed on the 101 Freeway.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The escalating unrest led LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell on Sunday night to break with Mayor Karen Bass, who has condemned President Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to the city.

“Do we need them? Well, looking at tonight, this thing has gotten out of control,” McDonnell said at a news conference. The chief said he wanted to know more about how the National Guard could help his officers before he decided whether their presence was necessary.

McDonnell drew a distinction between protesters and masked “anarchists” who he said were bent on exploiting the state of unrest to vandalize property and attack police.

CHP officers on the 101 Freeway.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“When I look at the people who are out there doing the violence, that’s not the people that we see here in the day who are out there legitimately exercising their 1st Amendment rights,” McDonnell said. “These are people who are all hooded up — they’ve got a hoodie on, they’ve got face masks on.”

“They’re people that do this all the time,” he said. “They get away with whatever they can. Go out there from one civil unrest situation to another, using the same or similar tactics frequently. And they are connected.”

McDonnell said some agitators broke up cinder blocks with hammers to create projectiles to hurl at police, and others lobbed “commercial-grade fireworks” at officers.

“That can kill you,” he said.

The LAPD arrested 50 people over the weekend. Capt. Raul Jovel, who oversaw the department’s response to the protests, said those arrested included a man accused of ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers and another suspect who allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail.

California National Guard troops watch as protesters clash with law enforcement in downtown Los Angeles.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

McDonnell said investigators will scour video from police body cameras and footage posted on social media to identify more suspects.

“The number of arrests we made will pale in comparison to the number of arrests that will be made,” McDonnell said.

Representatives of the Los Angeles city attorney and Los Angeles County district attorney’s office could not immediately say whether any cases were being reviewed for prosecution. Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said those who “hurl cinder blocks, light vehicles on fire, destroy property and assault law enforcement officers” will be charged.

On Sunday, the LAPD responded to a chaotic scene that began when protesters squared off with National Guard troops and Department of Homeland Security officers outside the Metropolitan Detention Center.

Around 1 p.m., a phalanx of National Guard troops charged into the crowd, yelling “push” as they rammed people with riot shields. The troops and federal officers used pepper balls, tear gas canisters, flash-bangs and smoke grenades to break up the crowd.

No one in the crowd had been violent toward the federal deployment up to that point. The purpose of the surge appeared to be to clear space for a convoy of approaching federal vehicles.

Department of Homeland Security police officers had asked protesters to keep vehicle paths clear earlier in the morning, but their commands over a loudspeaker were often drowned out by protesters’ chants. They offered no warning before charging the crowd.

California National Guard troops stand guard at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Some in the crowd lobbed bottles and fireworks at the LAPD. Two people rode motorcycles to the front of the crowd, revving their engines and drawing cheers from bystanders. Police accused them of ramming the skirmish line, and the motorcycles could be seen fallen over on their sides afterward. The drivers were led away by police, their feet dragging across asphalt lined with shattered glass and spent rubber bullets.

On the other side of the 101, vandals set fire to a row of Waymos. Acrid smoke billowed from the autonomous taxis as people smashed their windows with skateboards. Others posed for photographs standing on the roofs of the burning white SUVs.

After California Highway Patrol officers pushed protesters off the 101 Freeway, people wearing masks flung chunks of concrete — and even a few electric scooters — at the officers, who sheltered under an overpass. A piece of concrete struck a CHP car, drawing cheers from the crowd.

Los Angeles Police Department officers shoot tear gas as they advance on demonstrators who formed a makeshift barricade.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Closer to City Hall, the LAPD pushed demonstrators toward Gloria Molina Grand Park, where some in the crowd wrenched pink park benches from their concrete mounts and piled them into a makeshift barricade in the middle of Spring Street.

The crowd, which included a Catholic priest wearing his robes and a woman with a feathered Aztec headdress, milled behind the barricades until LAPD officers on horseback pushed them back, swinging long wooden batons at several people who refused to retreat. Video footage circulating online showed one woman being trampled.

The crowd moved south into the Broadway corridor, where the LAPD said businesses reported being looted around 11 p.m. Footage filmed by an ABC-7 helicopter showed people wearing masks and hooded sweatshirts breaking into a shoe store.

McDonnell said the scenes of lawlessness disgusted him and “every good person in this city.”

Before any chaos erupted on Sunday, Julie Solis walked along Alameda Street holding a California flag, warning protesters not to engage in the kind of behavior that followed later in the day.

Solis, 50, said she believed the National Guard was deployed solely to provoke a response that would justify further aggression from federal law enforcement.

“They want arrests. They want to see us fail,” she said. “We need to be peaceful. We need to be eloquent.”