LAPD breaks up seven-day sit-in outside its headquarters, where protesters set up camp in support of Ezell Ford, a mentally ill man shot dead by police in August

Los Angeles police broke up a protest outside its department headquarters on Monday night, disbanding a seven-day sit-in and briefly arresting two leaders of the city’s Black Lives Matter movement, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The protesters set up a camp of makeshift tents and a kitchen about a week ago, prompted by the release of the autopsy report on Ezell Ford, a mentally ill 25-year-old shot dead during a confrontation with police in August. The hazy circumstances of Ford’s death and simmering, nationwide resentment toward the police force have provoked outrage in Los Angeles for weeks.

The “Occupy LAPD” demonstrators called for the department to fire both officers involved Ford’s death, and for indictments against them.

On Monday, the Times reported, police ordered the protesters to pack up their encampment and leave the sidewalk. The protesters complied peacefully, although they traded shouts with police.

Two protest leaders, Melina Abdullah and Sha Dixon, were arrested after trying to deliver letters with their demands to the police chief, Charles Beck. The women, a professor of pan-African studies at Cal State and a television producer respectively, attempted to bypass the police line and enter the building, at which point they were detained. Both Abdullah and Dixon were released hours later.

Melina Abdullah (@DocMellyMel) Small and mighty #OccupyLAPD encampment endures. Can't kill the movement! #BlackLivesMatter @BLMLA pic.twitter.com/HH5g5wbRP6

Eleven-year-old protester Thandiwe Abdullah told the LA Times her age did nothing to mitigate her vulnerability: “I have a target on my back everywhere I go to. There is nothing I can do about it and age doesn’t matter any more. I can be killed at 11.”



Protests have erupted against police around the US since the August killing by police of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. Since then, thousands of demonstrators have marched in major US cities, calling for accountability in police departments and highlighting inequalities suffered by minorities. In Los Angeles, with its troubled history of riots over the perceived unaccountability of the LAPD, protests have found particular resonance.