Looting Is Bad. So Are Curfews.
The California National Guard should be helping to put out fires, not helping to restrict people's freedom of movement.
The California National Guard arrived in burn zones Friday to assist local police "with traffic control and critical infrastructure protection," Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said. Since then, the National Guard has been helping to enforce a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. in and around Pacific Palisades and Altadena—the two neighborhoods most impacted by the Palisades and Eaton fires.
Preventing looting is worthwhile. Preventing residents' freedom of movement is not.
The Palisades and Eaton fires that erupted Tuesday were only 14 percent and 33 percent contained, respectively, on Monday morning. As of Thursday evening, 20 people had been arrested on suspicion of looting, according to the Los Angeles Times. Although L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger has said the curfew was not punitive, Luna has promised to book those violating the curfew. He has also said that all who remain in areas subject to evacuation orders are guilty of misdemeanors.
Under the evacuation orders, thousands of residents who are concerned about the safety of their property may not return to retrieve their most valuable possessions without breaking the law—assuming they manage to make it past deputies and national guardsmen stationed at road closures and conducting roving patrols. For residents in areas subject to curfews, it's now illegal to leave their own homes to feed pets abandoned by neighbors.
Theft, vandalism, and other property crimes are wrong, and they deserve to be "punished to the fullest extent of the law," as Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman has promised to do. But 20 instances of burglary do not justify redirecting the Guard from protecting critical firefighting infrastructure to enforcing curfews and evacuation orders.
Los Angeles County Fire Department Chief Anthony Marrone said last week that all of the city's fire departments were exhausted, "with no fire apparatus or additional personnel to spare." The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) is stretched to the point of asking all off-duty firefighters to assist, using a protocol that had not been exercised for 19 years. Firefighters from other parts of the state, from other states, even from Canada and Mexico have traveled to L.A. to help.
Of the 600 CalGuard servicemembers deployed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday, 300 were working with law enforcement with an equal number assisting firefighters. On Saturday, Newsom increased the number of CalGuard to 1,680, more than 1,000 of which were mobilized to assist local law enforcement. Newsom mobilized a thousand more CalGuard servicemembers on Sunday. As long as the fires are raging, the majority of these servicemembers should be working with the LAFD, not the Sheriff's Department.
