This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app Stories We're falling for you today. Of course, we are right on top of all the protests that have developed over the weekend and will continue today. Also other news, of course going on. The ex girlfriend of Shan Di Deacomb says she had concerns about him using his cell phones to take explicit videos of her because others could access them. It is just a steady
stream of bad behavior on display at this trial. The woman is only being referred to as Jane as back on the stand today. Last week she claimed he forced her to have sex with three male escorts back to back while he watched. Apparently this is his thing. What a great person she and she thought that that was going to endear her to him. Women do a lot of things to keep the relationship alive.
Russia has launched almost five hundred drones at Ukraine in the biggest overnight drone bombardment in the three year war. Ukrainian Air Force said this today. As well as the almost five hundred drones, they said twenty missiles of various types fired at different parts of Ukraine. According to the Air Force said the barrage targeted mainly the central and western areas of Ukraine.
Well, we had protests over the weekend. There were peaceful spots, there were spots where people were setting waymos on fire. Michael Monks was there and I got to say, Michael, I listened to your coverage extensively. Yesterday as a long weekend for you. You were called out there to cover the protest Friday night hosts a show on Saturday, and then yesterday I heard you in the neon hour, I
heard you in the six o'clock hour. You were our man on the protests, and we appreciate that great job, and you came in here with a head full esteem.
Today you're pissed off.
Oh I'm so mad about all of this, And how much more can the city take? Really, we have a lot to get, can we? Absolutely? Because when you think back to January and the tragedy of the fires and then the chaotic aftermath, the politicized aftermath that's still ongoing, and the rebuilding efforts and just how draining that is. Obviously more so for the people directly impacted, but for the community as a whole across La County and now this, you know.
Do we ever get a break here?
I'm two years four months here living and I am exhausted chronic selfishness.
Well, you're the only selfishness, is what we're dealing.
You're the only reporter if I'm not mistaken, So you're gonna be spread a little thin. We used to have six or seven people this show.
Yeah, so we had a little bit of trauma here dating back to November.
That that's true.
But I am the I in KFI now is what I say. Yeah, but I'm glad to do it. You know, it's important to our listeners who are loyal to us and expect answers from our government and from day to day activities, and so when this type of situation knocks on our door, we're going to do it. Regardless of our situation here. It's important, and this was really important. We're sort of the center of the immigration policy universe
right now. Of course, these sweeps or these raids or detainments, arrest they're happening across the country, but Los Angeles and California and its relationship with this White House was already a powder keg. But this is an issue where they could not be farther apart, and this is the perfect battleground for both of these ideologies to play out. And what we're seeing in the streets is really how that is going to go. We haven't seen the last of
this now. I also, I mean that is a very high level way of thinking about it, and there are people on both sides who carry those ideologies, and like you said, they're playing it out on the streets of Los Angeles. There are also people, the chronically selfish people who are only there to burn things and break stuff.
I talked about this yesterday with.
With Chris Merrill and also Mark Thompson during the afternoon during our coverage. Los Angeles has professional protesters, and I qualify that to say these aren't necessarily people who were dropped in by some you know, organization that's paying folks to come protest. But they are pro in their skills at it. They're absolutely elite experience protesters. Their experience, they know what to bring, they know how to respond when things go awry, and they know how to prepare for them,
and so they thrive in this environment. So it doesn't matter if yesterday's event was about black lives matter. If it was about the Lakers winning the championship or this, you know, it's this now, and those are the ones who showed up now.
And they were the ones wearing masks back you know, the Bill Bratton days when he first put the agitators on our radar twenty years ago. You know, he mentioned that they wear masks. They are professional. This is what they do. Some of them are bought and sold and paid for in terms of ratching it up whatever kind of dialogue you're trying to further.
Yeah, And what sucks as just an LA resident is the way my neighborhood, downtown Los Angeles is just treated like a battleground because one the situation has been escalated because a policy is being enforced as promised by the President, and then escalated by the presence of a new entity, the National Guard, being brought here, which changed the dynamics. I can't say for certain whether that escalated tensions, but it certainly escalated the presence of what we're seeing down there.
Military garb, military vehicles, military weapons. That's a different vibe even than federal police. And it's important to point out those National Guard troops were not on the front lines. They were not on the skirmish lines with any of these any of the protesters, and haven't been for what I understand what I was able to see over the weekend. The National Guard troops were brought in early yesterday for the first time and basically only provide security for federal properties,
federal buildings, federal vehicles, and things like that. The officers that we did see on the skirmish lines yesterday and the day before, County Sheriff LAPD, other law enforcement agencies, including the California Highway Patrol. So the idea that this is somehow a fight between protesters and federal agents is not what's playing out on the street.
I don't know if they matter.
The protesters may feel like that's what they're doing, but that's not at all what they're doing, and it doesn't matter who's there if it's law enforcement. There are certain elements of the protest movement, regardless again of the issue, who are ready to do battle with the law enforcement. I will just note that the earlier protest yesterday was outside the federal building downtown next to the jail, where apparently a lot of these detainees, including union leader David
ware To, are being held in federal custody. The skirmish line was formed by the National guardsmen and that was the first taste of things, pysical altercations that we got. I'm standing, you know, in the midst of the protest crowd, you doing gathering sound, doing commentary and analysis and reporting the news, and suddenly it got a little hairy, and it was the National Guard using their shields, pushing the protesters off the sidewalk into Alameda Street, and I wasn't
clear as to why. Then they stopped, They backed off for a minute, and then it started again, much more intensely, and that's when some tear gas was shot out that I got a taste of for the first time, and that's not a pleasant experience. But that was the National Guard. And what ended up happening was a National Guard cleared everybody away from the sidewalk and then allowed about thirty federal vehicles to come by, so they had clearly gotten word, hey, we've got some cars coming clear the space.
The LAPD has been trained, as Gary and I were pointing out last hour, has been trained and retrained and tweaked and all the things for this protest, specifically, for immigration protests specifically because of the tinder box of political that it is. I want to know if you know the difference between the orders the LAPD has and containing these protests and the orders the National Guard has when it comes to containing these protests, because I think the two have very different playbooks.
So we'll talk about that when we come back.
Michael Monks has joined us after a couple of days out on the streets, right, is that an appropriate way to say Friday night, this with this codday after his something Saturday Night Live here.
Yeah, you're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI Am six forty.
We are standing by expecting a news conference from LAPD at some point this morning. We do know that there are also more protests that have been called for a little bit later in the day, so this is going to be something that we keep an eye on.
Michael Monks has joined us.
He was out there yesterday, had a little taste of the old protest juice.
I did a little tear gas tier guests. Yeah, it doesn't taste good.
I think we've all had at least some ex experience with that beautiful cloud of freedom.
I never got tear gast covering anything. I did get tear gas on my honeymoon in Athens.
I could see why. Yeah, by your husband.
No, that didn't start till later in the marriage. No, But they had a bunch of protest They always have protests. It's Syntagma square, Am I saying it right? Syntagma square antagma square?
But yeah, okay, we were talking about a lot of the questions. Specifically, we were talking about the roles that National Guard troops have been playing now a few hundred of them on the streets. Then you've got Los Angeles Police Department, you've got the LA County Sheriff's Department, and all of them doing these different enforcements, the different roles that they're playing so far, and not one of them.
I didn't see anybody really cracking heads over the course of the last few days, despite a couple of instances where it would have been clearly called for. And one of the points that I wanted that I was mentioning was I don't know if it was. I think it
was Los Angeles Street, the overcrossing there. There were several HP units on the one to one freeway from the earlier enforcement to get people off of the freeway, and that along Aliso Street and Los Angeles Street, there were hundreds of people who were throwing stuff onto those CHP units, and anytime an officer would come out from under the overpass,
they would get pelted with stuff. Yeah, and not just stuff scooters, I mean rocks easily, very easily, And then they're trying to set fire to these units that that would have been not It wasn't even just a it wasn't a bubbling up situation. It was violent and potentially deadly. And we've always heard, I've always heard that that's what would then drive some sort of action by law enforcement.
And it took a couple of hours before that bridge was cleared, took a couple of hours before I saw a single Los Angeles Police officer on Alameda Street outside that Federal building. And I just want to note there's a couple of things here. You can protest. We have the First Amendment, but there are some steps one needs to take. This particular protest outside the federal building was unpermitted. So from the very beginning, technically this protest was not allowed.
Now they were staying on the sidewalks for the most part at the very beginning. But after the initial skirmish that I mentioned, the last segment with the National Guard, when they pushed everybody into the street to make way for some federal vehicles, hundreds more showed up. This is about seven hundred deep, and now there's tons of people pouring into Alameda Street. Traffic blocked. Traffic's still open. By the way, there's some major downtown street between union stations,
City Hall to the fashion district and beyond. No enforcement at all on this street. It wasn't until two and a half hours later that a tweet came from the Central Division of the Police Department LAPD that said the South Found lanes are closed.
They still kept the other side of the street.
They let it get to a point here in Los Angeles.
They just do because the optics of a police state.
Out of the gate are not good.
You have the hope that the protesters will tire themselves out, that if they see the police moving in for any sort of skirmish line that that will just incite more. I don't want to say by agitation.
Which is that's a I mean, that's we've seen it over and over again when that happens. I mean, I know, I use the example of Portland earlier, but that was an example of you're not going to be able to wait anybody out. You're not going to wait out protesters, especially in such a heated issue as this. They will continue and they'll even if you don't bring it officers and you you know, get that agitation, they'll agitate themselves.
You'll you'll you'll have more people come in.
And amazingly the amount of damage that was not done yesterday considering the amount of graffiti that exists all over those I mean blocks and blocks and blocks of graffiti. But I mean there's not a whole lot of businesses for people to break into down there, not the way there would be in other parts of the city. But they will, they'll foment their own hatred. They'll they'll continue
to build. Let me, if I may just editorialize up briefly, there aren't as many businesses downtown as there should be. And we heard the police chiefs say late last night during a press conference he had to update the public and the media that it has gotten out of control, this situation and that we the department are overwhelmed that's not new. Downtown looks like this all the time. Now, there may not be waymos burning in the middle of the street at that volume, but there are waymos destroyed.
There are people killed by lunatics wielding machetes.
In downtown Los Angeles.
There are buildings covered in graffiti, fresh graffiti every single morning. The streets are covered in trash. And if you call the police the LAPD to do anything about the open air drug use that's taking place. The psychotic homeless people who are fighting with each other are erecting tents outside your apartment building, nothing is done about it. They have
apparently been overwhelmed for quite some time. But this downtown situation is nothing new, and nobody cares about the condition of that neighborhood.
The LAPD, though, is hamstrung with what they're allowed to do. I mean, I think, and I haven't been in those rooms, but you know they have been told that they can't go clear the open air drug markets, you know, because of what's going on at city Hall and the political messaging and what the LA and I guess you can have the conversation to what end is it their business
or in their purview? You know, you've seen the laped have to be like mental health advocates, you know, with the opioid crisis and everything else, But you know they I think there's probably some mixed mess that goes on at whatever the new Parker Center is.
For sure, But at some point when you have a direct threat to safety like we had yesterday, I was really surprised, and I don't know, I kept saying yesterday, I don't know what the policy is. I don't know what the police protocol is, but I do know that as a city street, it was getting extraordinarily dangerous.
It was clearly about to explode into something.
Somebody who lives in downtown is like, where's the police that I pay for?
Like I need all the take here? Yeah, yeah, I understand that.
Don't go anywhere.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Ketamine is suddenly everywhere.
We'll get into it coming up after Deborah's news at the top of the hour, because Trump over the weekend called Elon Musk a major drug addict, and ketamine seems to be the drug du jour there for Elon Musk. But like I said, it is everywhere people turning to it to cure a variety of ailments. I believe the most high profile one would be Matthew Perry, who unfortunately was abusing ketamine there, but that was said to at least for a small time, help him stay sober, get
it life on track, and things like that. So we'll dig into what that all is all about coming up at eleven.
I mentioned yesterday my nephew was hanging out with us yesterday and we just flipped back and forth between the Yankees Red Sox game and protests.
I was gonna say it was like a nice little afternoon. I was still the protests part.
It was such a nice Granted that's three thousand miles away. I know they're playing in Yankee Stadium, but nobody cared about what was going on in downtown La. I mean, we were here, and obviously it's a big deal, it is a national, international story, but that there is still some amount of solace to be found in God's greatest game of baseball.
Well, baseball can make anything, destress any sort of situation.
I developed a nervous tick this weekend where I had a baseball in my hand. Okay, I fell asleep with a baseball in my hand on Saturday night.
Oh okay, weird. That's taking it weird into a different area, better.
Than a pacifier.
Dodgers did beat the Cardinal seven to three yesterday. They're in San Diego to take on the second place Padres tonight. Angels lost to the Mariners three to two. They will host The a's Michael Monks has joined us. Michael was out on the streets covering the protests yesterday for KFI, and we've been talking about the.
Sort of the feeling.
You're a downtown LA resident and not only did you not have to drive to work yesterday, you got to see firsthand what goes on. You know, we've referenced a couple times that this is not an uncommon thing in Los Angeles to see protests about whatever, even specifically immigration protests.
And this is a different feel because now we have at the upper echelons of power the governor saying he's going to sue the President of the United States for going over his head and calling in the National Guard, and basically the President saying, if you can't handle it to the lapd La County Sheriff's Department HP, then we'll handle it the federal government, and then Governor Newsom, in an interview last night on MSNBC, basically said, to get
to President Trump. If you can't handle it, we will. What are we doing, What are we doing? What we have found ourselves, And especially if you live or work in downtown Los Angeles and you still have some positive feelings towards that. We're caught in the middle of this political match that has been building for a while. President
Trump and California have a tense relationship. The California is a very important state regardless of how it votes, It's just a very important state economically, and so the governor knows that. But they are going to be fighting each other on a variety of fronts. This is the one that happens to impact all of us directly because it involves a lot of people who live here, Whether they should be here, that's what we're debating, right, That's what
the policy makers are debating. But there are a lot of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County and Los Angeles that are part of it. There's no doubt that those of us in this room, that most of the people who are listening know somebody they may not know the status. But you know somebody, you interact with somebody, So this
is naturally going to be ground zero for this debate. Unfortunately, because of the behavior of the leaders in these various offices, they treat it to score cheap political points rather than expressing concern for the safety and the security and the prosperity frankly of the community.
So when you talk to people out there protesting, what was their anger directed towards. Was it local, was it national? Was it personal? Was it all of the above?
I love this part of it because it can't I lost that there are many people who are protesting the immigration policy enforcement that is taking place because of what President Trump ran on and because what he is directing now. He made this very clear on the campaign trail that this is a top priority, and now he is following through with that. Even in a place that did not give him very many votes. This is exactly where he wants to be doing it, because you can run those
numbers up very easily. In La County. There are folks who are down there saying, please don't separate families. There are immigrants who have fled difficult situations in their native countries. Yes, they cross the border illegally. Yes, their presence here is unlawful, but they go to work, they provide services, they may take care of your children, and they also have children, so please do not separate them. This is an inhumane policy. There's got to be a better way to handle this.
On the other hand, there are people that we were just talking about in Los Angeles who long to fight with law enforcement, and they come down and completely dilute the message. I will say there was a march downtown after the initial protest at the Federal building. It started at City Hall. They gathered people so fast, on very short notice. They flooded Temple Street with a march against ice enforcement, thousands and thousands deep, blocks and blocks long.
I had never seen a march like that in downtown Los Angeles. And all of that messaging from that march, which was a very powerful visual, which would have been a more effective message than burning waymos and throwing line scooters off a bridge to the chp on the freeway. They've cost themselves all of that goodwill.
What are you hearing about today?
We're hearing that there is going to be a protest again, another organized effort at noon. We've heard the superintendent coming out in front of this to talk about what it means for LA Unified. In the past, we have seen students kind of filter out through the schools and join the protests. Do we know if this is anticipated to be a big one, if it's just going to be a few people outside of city yelling what's the deal?
It seems like there's going to be a dilution of this effort as well, because there are many fronts.
Now.
We heard from the superintendent of LAUSD just moments ago he had a press conference. Some unions are having a press conference today, and there's also various elected officials from the Senator like Adam Schiff, the governor, and members of Congress calling for the release of this union leader, David Wuerta. And that's another issue, Like they're having press events and they're showing up the Federal Building to see this David.
Where nobody cares about that. I mean, I'm just going to tell you, and nobody on the street knows who David Wherta is. He's a power player, a political power player. But it doesn't matter to the people who live here in Los Angeles what this guy is doing. So they they're messaging it's not your maid, it's not the person who takes care of your kids, not the guy who runs a taco stand or has a more prominent job than that.
Well, I want to point something out.
We got to talk back from somebody who had a suggestion for Karen Bess.
Hey, Gary and Shannon says Joseph and San Diego. I guess I would assume that the the mayor of LA would send a press release at least to the citizens of LA that it's their right to protest, but we don't need the violence and the destruction and the looting. I feel like that would go a long way.
Yeah, that would go a long way into the garbage can. That would go nowhere. I mean, I think that's your point.
Yeah, the majority of the people on the street are not listening to any They didn't even tell you who the mayor of LA was.
I will tell you.
When the police start those skirmish lines and they announce, hey, you have to disperse right now, this is now an unlawful assembly. Most people leave, they really do. That is an effective measure because people don't want to go to jail, right some people do, and it's those people that do want to go to jail because of the cheap political
points that we were talking about. There are images from yesterday and Saturday and Friday that can be weaponized either by the federal government or by the activist on the ground here to prove their point that LA is lawless and out of control, or that a military police state has now decided upon Los Angeles and we need to fight back. But it doesn't matter what the mayor says
right now. It matters what the mayor does. It matters what the police department does and if they can't keep traffic and people out of the streets on Alameda Street one block.
I love you, but it's killing me Alameda maybe for a white girl. No, that's the way everyone says it. It's no, it is not as it's like San Pedro. It's not San Pedro, San Pedro.
Yeah, I know, but it's Alameda Street.
Well, I'm just saying, I'm sorry, wish.
Neighborhood do you live in?
Yes?
So, uh, it's Alameda.
But girls, girls whoa do not girl me? Do we have a pronunciation guy?
We have a pronunciation guy that I needed when I first started here, And I'm gonna look it up and the one that I won't accept. I do accept san Pedro reluctantly, and Los Felis. I accept that one. You're very reluctantly.
You're a Seplevita person.
I'll tell you what I am not. I'm not a Dwarty person.
You're not a Dwarty.
I'm not a dwar I'm sorry. He will be war to me. Okay, what about the Cohunga pass. That's a good one too.
Man.
You know, in Washington, when I moved to Seattle to be a reporter, I afked up every name for.
A long time, supposed to prop you.
When I came down here, my uncle Jim lived in Laguna, and one of the first things he did is like, come over, we're going to talk about names, place names, place names, and he just and I thought, you're off your ass, you're crazy.
But I'm thinking, well, remember what happened in Seattle. But he was right.
There's so many different Ukaipa, Huh, that's crazy.
Michael, Thank you forever, my pleasure. It's my pleasure.
Who saw Hammock coming. We're over there and you.
Kuipa, you're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KF I am six forty.
Of course, we're following the stories of the ongoing protests, and if there are any that pop up today, we will bring those to you. There was a word that we might see a news conference from LAPD coming up at some point, so keeping an eye after that. I wanted to point out a couple of things I teased earlier regarding some information and trying to keep straight exactly
what's going on behind the scenes. The original cause or the original argument here is the ongoing ice enforcement operations that are taking place into other parts of in parts of southern California.
US Attorney Bill A.
Sale, the new US attorney for the Central District, was on with Conan Nolan over the weekend and specifically talked about, for example, what happened on Saturday. Saturday in Paramount, there were stories about how federal agents were raiding a home depot and chasing people through the parking lot at home depot to take them into custody.
It was not an immigration rate at home depot. What happened there is we actually have a federal facility, there's a Homeland Security building their adjacent to that home depot, and that we were staging there this morning for some targeted operations that were that actually did happen today, they still occurred, so it was just a staging area for
our federal agents. But they were spotted and word got out and these agitators who are organizing this resistance effort started mobilizing people to that location and it turned into it turned into an ugly scene pretty quickly.
And then Who's also asked and Bill Asaley explained, who are these operations targeting? Are they really just picking people up in a home home depot parking lot? And his answer was absolutely, unequivocally no.
We're going out and executing search warrant not with search warrans, but arrest warrants on people who are charged with federal felonies related to their immigration status prior to people who've been previously deported and re entered it's a felony. We also were executing administrative removal orders, so these are people who've exhausted their their due process rights in immigration court. There's a final order for their deportation. We're going out and executing this orders as well.
So I think just in terms of trying to keep the information straight about what's actually happening when it comes to these immigration enforcement operations that are taking place.
All right, We'll stay on top of this, and we have our eyes on downtown as well as any press conferences that may pop up with regard to what's happening today with this plan protest, keep it right here.
We will stay on top of it. On Gary and Shannon.
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live on KFIAM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app