California, Los Angeles, and University of California, Los Angeles, leaders have all been absent from their posts, making real justice from the clash between terrorist-sympathizing protesters and counterprotesters almost impossible.
The Los Angeles Police Department is using facial recognition software to try and identify violent protesters, which is a problem when those protesters are known for wearing masks to hide their identities. The police have yet to make arrests from that clash eight days ago. (They did finally arrest 209 people once the encampment was stormed and disbanded by police.)
The obvious problem is that state, city, and university leadership allowed the “protest” to get to that point. The illegal encampment was allowed to sit on campus, grow, and eventually fortify, which escalated the force police would have to use when they eventually did get the green light to shut it down. It also escalated the tensions on campus and emboldened the terrorist-sympathizing “pro-Palestinian” protesters to harass students on campus, which fueled the response from counterprotesters in the first place.
Where does the buck stop? With no one, evidently. According to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, UCLA is “not our jurisdiction” because it’s a state university, putting LAPD below university police and the California Highway Patrol in the pecking order. With respect to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), CHP says it responded after “unacceptable” delays and a limited response from university police. Either one or both of them were asleep at the wheel, or UCLA simply saw no urgency in removing the illegal encampment until it predictably escalated to violence.
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All of this raises more questions than answers. Why did UCLA wait, if that is what Newsom is referring to, to ask for additional law enforcement assistance? Where were Bass and Newsom when the encampment was set up two weeks ago, and why were they not at the very least putting pressure on the university to nip it in the bud then? We had already seen protesters preventing students from moving around campus, and even impeding the movement of firefighters, before some counterprotesters took it upon themselves to try and dismantle the encampment.
Leaving police to try and identify violent masked protesters who assaulted people to protect their illegal encampment means there likely will not be any true justice for it. The encampment should have never reached that point in the first place, and the fact that it did so reflects poorly on UCLA leadership, Bass, and Newsom, no matter what the specifics of their jurisdiction were.