TikTok Video Paints a Picture of LAPD Officers Evicting Homeless; a More Detailed Video tells a Different Story

The narrative is everything to the Left, and despite the Democrats trying to distance themselves from Defund the Police, homeless activists in Los Angeles are still hard at work trying to make the Los Angeles Police Department look like criminals.

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is packing his bags, hoping he passes vetting for Biden’s ambassadorship so he can jet off to India. As a “just in case” on his way out the door, Garcetti signed a law passed by the Los Angeles City Council prohibiting the homeless from making temporary shelters within 500 feet of schools, daycare facilities, parks, libraries, and several other locations throughout the city of Los Angeles.

Since that happened last week, the Mayor’s mansion was vandalized, and homeless “advocates” have been losing their minds (if they ever had them to begin with).

A Tik Tok video has also been making the rounds. It shows the LAPD on Venice Beach, brandishing rifles and detaining a few homeless on the sand. The video went viral, and an immediate narrative was set that the homeless were being evicted from Venice Beach at gunpoint.

The TikTok video was countered, but only after 1.9 million views and lots of commentary from the activist and advocate peanut gallery.

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The Twitter handle “Venice Beach Boardwalk” was one of the first to debunk the narrative of evil LAPD officers kicking the homeless off the beach.

Please don’t spread disinformation. LAPD responded after a homeless man pulled a gun on a homeless woman on the beach in the midst of a busy Sunday afternoon. This has nothing to do with eviction or housing status

This incident occurred around July 25, and it took over a week for the media to pick up on it and report the facts, because… priorities. For that matter, the LAPD didn’t rush to issue a response either. So an entire week went by for people to jump to their own conclusions, condemn the LAPD to high heaven, and demand that Chief Michael Moore resign.

TMZ issued this August 3 report on the video:

Venice Beach is looking like a war zone — this footage shows police officers armed with assault rifles detaining a group of homeless people, but cops say the tense incident was misrepresented on social media.

The video does seem rather menacing — the heavily-armed LAPD officers were questioning 5 homeless people sitting on their knees in front of a makeshift encampment, with their hands in the air.

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ … this happened in the afternoon of July 25, when police got a call reporting a man brandishing a gun and threatening someone.

We’re told police found a BB gun in the area, but no one was arrested because cops could not find a victim. Our sources say it’s routine for cops to respond with heavy firepower when they get a call about a person armed with a gun.

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The Daily Mail UK also issued a report on the social media trend surrounding the actual incident:

However, the clip was shared multiple times with the same misconstrued caption across Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, including by former professional basketball player Rex Chapman and New York rapper Awkword. Many expressed outrage at the armed evictions, with some calling it police brutality and others saying it looks like the extermination of homeless people.

The misinterpretation of the video only adds to the hysteria over Venice Beach’s uptick in homelessness and crime, and the contentious debate over how to address it.

This longer version of the incident from the Santa Monica Close Up YouTube account tells a fuller tale:

On August 3, the LAPD confirmed and gave context to what was shown on the above video to Insider:

LAPD Officer Norma Eisenman told Insider that the officers were responding to a radio call warning of an assault with a deadly weapon. The suspect was described as a white male in a blue tent who threatened to shoot people with his gun.

The LAPD said the suspect, whose name remains unknown, alleged that a woman attempted to steal his bike, which led him to pull out his pellet gun in defense. Though the suspect was temporarily detained, carrying a pellet gun is not illegal and he was eventually let go, according to the LAPD. There were no reported injuries.

“Officers arrived, the witness pointed out the tent with the alleged male with a handgun and tactical deployed. The portion of the video being circulated depicts this. The individuals were ordered out of the tent and complied,” Officer Eisenman told Insider.

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This incident is only adding to the LAPD’s PR problems. The department is still suffering the fallout from a June 30 incident where their bomb squad failed to calculate the force of a controlled detonation of confiscated firearms, and damaged homes in a South Los Angeles neighborhood. People in the community are blaming two deaths on the destructive blast.

And the department reported its 10th COVID death this year, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. With almost 10,000 officers, this is less than 1 percent of the force; but, the People’s City Council and others use this fact to blacken the eye of the force, and paint the LAPD as COVID deniers.

Despite these inflicted, and self-inflicted wounds, the LAPD chose to engage with the diverse Los Angeles communities for the National Night Out.

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The Leftist campaign of psychological and tactical warfare against law enforcement is rampant throughout Los Angeles, as it is in other major cities. While the brass only seems to fuel the narrative of evil, militant, and incompetent law enforcement, the dedicated rank and file do what they can to continue the work of policing as best they can.

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