Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.latimes.com
A video showing a federal officer pointing a gun inches from the face of a bystander during an immigration operation Friday in North Hollywood has sparked new outrage about the tactics being used in the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown.
The video, obtained by The Times, shows the masked federal agent shoving the man into bushes and pointing the handgun at his face after the bystander tossed a spray canister another agent had dropped into the street.
A statement from the Department of Homeland Security said agents were arresting Angel Luis Gonzalez Lobo, who had a final order of deportation, when he fled on foot from his vehicle.
On video, a bystander walking two dogs comes upon the scene.
According to the DHS account, “a bystander armed with pepper spray encountered the officers, creating a moment of chaos in an otherwise controlled scene. These actions by these individuals created an unnecessarily dangerous, and precarious environment for federal law enforcement as they endeavored to carry out their lawful duties and effect an arrest.”
The encounter occurred just before 8:30 a.m. near the intersection of Vineland Place and Otsego Street, said Damari Butler, a resident who witnessed it. Butler was sitting on his balcony when he said he saw a pedestrian get tackled on the sidewalk by two masked men who appeared to be U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Butler said there seemed to be no warning before the man was tossed into nearby bushes. That’s what prompted Butler to record.
“There was no asking what his name was, no ID, nothing,” Butler said. “They just grabbed him.”
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The video shows a masked ICE agent taking a pedestrian into custody on the sidewalk, as a man with two dogs on leashes stands nearby.
After a few seconds, a second masked person wearing tactical gear that says “ICE Police” across the chest runs over, telling the man with the dogs to back up while aiming what witnesses say was a can of pepper spray at him.
The man with the two dogs is then seen stepping back as the two agents handcuff the man on the sidewalk. Someone can also be heard yelling “ICE!” in the background.
As the agents carry the arrested man by his arms, one agent is seen in the video dropping the canister. The bystander with the dogs then rushes toward the canister. One officer sees this and races toward him. The man tosses the object away, toward the street. That is when the second officer pulls out the gun.
“The guy with the dog, I guess he moved the pepper spray out of the way, and then the other ICE agent ran over,” Butler said.
The agent extends his left arm and shoves the man into the bushes and leans over him, holding the gun just inches from the man’s face. The agent then steps back and reholsters the gun and walks back to the SUV.
Several law enforcement experts who reviewed the video said that while agents might have been justified in drawing a gun when the bystander reached for the spray canister, they could not justify or provide a reason for an agent to rush the bystander and place a gun to his face given the circumstances.
“These agents are not displaying very good officer safety,” said Jim Bueermann, former chief of police of the Redlands Police Department and founder of Future Policing Institute, an organization that provides research and consulting on law enforcement issues.
“Officers relied on their training and took all available measures to safely secure the scene, controlling both individuals, who had created chaos, without further incident,” the DHS spokesperson said in the statement.
Gonzalez Lobo will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings, it said, “and will receive due process.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the situation “unacceptable” and something that “will not be tolerated in L.A.”
While no one appears to have been injured in the incident, it is one of numerous violent immigration actions on the streets of American cities to generate debate in the last few months.
The Trump administration slowed the massive immigration sweeps that upended cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis earlier this year. But data show immigration-related arrests surged this summer.
This fall, a series of immigration arrests in the Central Valley disrupted several agricultural communities, with officials saying they saw declines in school and work attendance as a result. California officials demanded details from Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the operation’s scope and purpose.
The incident ended when more agents arrived and put the detained man in the back of an SUV. The bystander with the dogs walks toward the officers, and another agent appears to spray him with something.
The bystander is then seen running away.
Los Angeles Councilmember Adrin Nazarian spoke with the bystander in a video posted on Instagram late Friday night.
The bystander said he had no phone to record the incident and began to yell to get neighbors and people nearby to witness the incident and record. He also said the man being detained appeared to have dropped some things while being detained, and that he was trying to return them when the agent pointed the gun at him.
“He dropped some things, and I was trying to help him and pick them up and trying to return them back to him,” the bystander said in the video. “I think the cop felt threatened by that and he pulled his gun on me and pepper-sprayed me.”
The incident occurred a day after a federal judge barred agents in Southern California from stopping people based on racial stereotypes, and found that immigration officials had stopped and detained people in the area because they appeared Latino.
Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor and former police officer, said the agent’s reaction to the bystander was inappropriate.
“I can understand agents not wanting a bystander to have a canister of pepper spray, but at the point the agent pointed his weapon at the guy, he’s tossed it quite a distance,” Stoughton said.
Bueermann said the agent who pointed the gun could be justified in doing so after the bystander reached for the canister, which could be considered a weapon. But the agents’ actions before and after raise serious questions about how they handled the incident.
The video appears to show one of the agents putting the canister of pepper spray on the ground to help carry the unidentified detainee, calling it a “major issue,” he said.
The agent who pointed the gun at the bystander could argue he was concerned with the safety of agents and others when the bystander grabbed the canister, Bueermann said, but the fact that the bystander was allowed to walk away, and the agent holstered his gun, raises questions about whether the agent feared for his safety.
“If he thought it was a threat and had responded as if the guy was a deadly threat, he probably would have arrested him or held him until backup arrived,” Bueermann said.
Instead, Bueermann said, the agent appeared to pull his weapon on the bystander because he was “pissed off” that he had not heeded orders to back away. Bueermann noted that one of the dogs appeared to nip at the agent when the bystander was shoved into the bushes, but the agent appeared unfazed and indifferent, even though the dogs could also be considered a threat.
The agent could be seen as justified for using his weapon when the bystander grabbed the can, Bueermann said, but agents on the ground appeared to make decisions that police in many departments would be trained not to do for their own safety.
Butler said the incident was unnerving to witness, and has left residents in the area rattled.
“It just shows you how powerless we are,” he said. “I thought that man was going to die. If someone is throwing out a gun and putting a gun to his face that close, you just expect the worst to happen at that moment.”
Ron Gochez, a leader with Union del Barrio, a community group that has been monitoring ICE activity in the area, said several videos of the North Hollywood incident have been sent to the group.
Bass said she was engaging with the attorney general’s office to ask them to “investigate and prosecute any wrongdoing by these federal agents.”
“Additionally, I referred this matter to the Office of U.S. Representative Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat leading oversight on federal immigration enforcement abuses,” she said in a statement. “We beat Trump and ICE in court, and new state laws have implemented accountability measures for ICE agents to protect our communities.”
Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running against Bass in the upcoming election, also released a statement on social media, stating she was outraged by the incident, calling ICE arrests in city streets “kidnappings.”
“LA is not a playground for the Trump regime’s inhumane operations, and Angelenos should not have to live in fear of going to work, taking their kids to school, or living their life.”
In a caption in the video interview with the bystander, Nazarian criticized the ICE agents’ actions.
“No one should be threatened for looking out for their community,” Nazarian wrote. “ICE agents do not belong in our city.”
The bystander recommended people record encounters with ICE, and explained why he stepped in.
“What happened, what I saw, they’re just too violent,” he said. “I was just trying to do what I could.”
Staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
