City attorney rebuked over bid to lift injunction

Council orders official to stop fighting a ban on L.A. officers targeting journalists

- BY LIBOR JANY AND DAVID ZAHNISER

SEAN BECKNER-CARMITCHEL

AN LAPD officer swings a baton at a journalist as he displays his press credential during a protest in August.

In a rare public rebuke, the Los Angeles City Council last week pressed the city's top lawyer to abandon her attempt to halt a federal judge's order prohibiting LAPD officers from targeting journalists with crowd control weapons.

On Friday, one day before “No Kings” demonstrations against the Trump administration in L.A. and elsewhere, the council voted 12 to 0 to direct City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to withdraw her request to lift the order.

Hours later, Feldstein Soto's legal team did just that, informing the judge it was pulling back its request — around the same time the judge rejected it.

Since June, the city has been hit with dozens of legal claims from protesters and journalists who reported that LAPD officers used excessive force against them during protests over President Trump's immigration crackdown.

The lawsuit that prompted the judge’s ban was brought by the Los Angeles Press Club and the news outlet Status Coup, which pointed to video evidence and testimonials suggesting that LAPD officers violated their own guidelines, as well as state law, by shooting journalists and others in sensitive parts of the body, such as the head, with weapons that launch projectiles the size of a mini soda can at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.