US politics live: Los Angeles police chief shoots down Donald Trump’s claim that law enforcement asked for his help

The LAPD Chief has spectacularly shot down Donald Trump’s claim that the cops were asking for federal help. Follow our live coverage.

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The local police chief in charge of handling Los Angeles’ response to the protests in recent days has shot down Donald Trump’s claim that law enforcement “asked” him to intervene.

Mr Trump made that claim on Wednesday evening, US time, which was otherwise consumed by his attendance at the musical Les Miserables at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Centre.

“What we have is a situation in Los Angeles that was caused by gross incompetence,” he said.

“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.”

Those remarks already contradicted what local police had said. Chief McDonnell has now made it clear, once again, the Mr Trump sent in troops without consulting his department.

“No, we were not in a position to request the National Guard,” he told CNN when quizzed about Mr Trump’s most recent comments.

“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 mobilise the department, or part of the department, to be able to get everybody out there dealing with the issue.”

That would mean pulling police off their duties fielding calls from the public to instead focus resources around, in this case, the protests.

“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,” he said.

“We’re at that level now, and we’re nowhere near a level where we would be reaching out to the Governor for the 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.”

The upshot here is that Mr Trump did not follow the normal process which, as Chief McDonnell explained, would involve the local police department surging its own resources, then asking for help from fellow departments in the area, and only after all of that requesting that Governor Gavin Newsom seek help from the National Guard.

Mr Trump is not resiling from his decision.

Read on for more updates.

Originally published as US politics live: Los Angeles police chief shoots down Donald Trump’s claim that law enforcement asked for his help