Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner discuss the recent domestic military deployment in Los Angeles amid local protests. They examine troop numbers, local law enforcement capacity, the limited protest area, comparisons to the George Floyd protests, and humorous personal anecdotes, highlighting that despite mobilizations, daily life remains largely unaffected for most residents.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There is the domestic military deployment — the federal troops and National Guard mobilization — and the legal pushback happening in places like Los Angeles and the Midwest.

Rick Rosner: Oh, right. Okay, we can talk about that. So, I looked it up: Los Angeles County covers about 4,000 square miles — it is enormous. That is almost as big as Rhode Island and Delaware combined. It has about ten million people. Between the sheriff’s deputies and the LAPD, there are about 18,000 officers in total.

The demonstrations themselves are mostly downtown and occupy just a few blocks — sometimes, just a couple of streets get blocked off. Compared to the entire size of Los Angeles County, the affected area is negligible. The LAPD has explicitly and repeatedly said they have it under control. That is true: no cars have been burned in over a week. The only night cars did get burned was because of Waymo — people used the app to summon driverless cars to the protest area, then set them on fire. They did that once and torched five Waymos. Waymo then disabled service in the protest zones, so the issue has not occurred again.

For comparison, during the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter unrest in 2020, 156 police cars were vandalized, and eight were destroyed. Back then, there was no National Guard deployment. However, those disturbances were far more serious than what we are seeing now.

Even so, Trump sent in 4,000 National Guard troops last week and just added 2,000 more. They mostly stand around — they probably get lightly heckled by protesters, but that is about it. He also sent in 700 Marines. So, technically, he did not double the local police force — but it is a significant deployment, considering the situation.

Meanwhile, there is no shortage of law enforcement in LA when it comes to handling protests. There is a general shortage of officers for all the regular policing duties the public expects: traffic enforcement is thin, which is why people drive like maniacs here — and, honestly, I do, too. However, the officers we have are not all tied up downtown. They are still out writing tickets, responding to calls, and so on.

That said, for burglaries, unless it is a break-in in progress, it can take hours for a response because we do not have enough officers to handle standard day-to-day tasks. But for protests? We do not need extra cops or troops to handle protests. It is not a hellscape here — far from it.

It is normal. I mean, I did have one situation where I could have used a National Guard guy: Carole and I had a two-for-one coupon for ice cream, and she made us walk about a third of a mile to get it — on a sunny day. The sun beat down on my head, and I got super cranky. On the way back, my ice cream melted in the heat — it was about 85 degrees.

We should have driven, or we needed a ‘National Ice Cream Guard’ to walk alongside us with an umbrella to shade the ice cream. Other than that, everything is fine. Nobody in LA is having their lives disrupted — except, maybe, if you are a brown person who has to worry about ICE showing up unexpectedly.

Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash

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