What a funny way to say “cops blew up neighborhood”
It’s been really hilarious to watch the LAPD try to dodge any responsibility for this while the media tries desperately to help them by publishing the most confusing fucking headlines but what really happened is that the cops found and confiscated thousands of pounds of “illegal” fireworks in LA and then decided to take 10 pounds of that, call the press, and make a show of using their new expensive toy, the “total containment” truck that is supposed to be able to take explosions of up to 15 pounds.
So they took the 10 pounds of explosives and their toy truck to a poor Black neighborhood, got reporters there, stuck the explosives inside, and set them off intentionally instead of just defusing them like they did with the other 4,990 pounds of fireworks.
For some reason, likely because something went wrong with their truck which I bet cost the city a shit ton of money, the containment completely failed and the explosion destroyed cars, homes, and injured 17-19 people (I’ve seen different reports with different numbers), a couple of whom were in critical condition but it sounds like everyone survived.
The LAPD then had the audacity to tweet that they didn’t know what caused the explosion when it was them who caused the explosion, intentionally, and we know because they called the media so that everybody could see them do it.
In summary, the LAPD wanted to show off/justify their ridiculous budget but their expensive toy was a dud and so they ended up bombing a poor Black neighborhood (because they would never risk this in a white neighborhood) and don’t want to admit it.
In my experience with people eager to show off their new toys, particularly ones explosion or fire related, my money says the truck itself didn’t fail, they just completely fucked up the operation of it, which just adds to the incompetence on display here.
I’m skeptical of this accounting of events. Not because it’s not possible that the LAPD just wanted to show-off a new toy and royally messed up, and that they didn’t care about collateral damage, but I don’t think it’s all that likely.
TL;DR: A lot of the above arguments (and similar arguments I have seen elsewhere) seemed based in misreading sources, bad faith, or misinformation. It’s certainly possible that the LAPD made a mistake here, but it’s equally possible that there was some unknown or unforeseeable mechanical error, or just an error in policy. Any person who is seeking to ascribe malicious intent to the LAPD, or any kind of utter recklessness to the LAPD is doing so prematurely.
First, there are a ton of articles about how LAPD doesn’t know the cause of the “explosion” that happened and people are reading this as the LAPD denying that they set-off the fireworks that caused the explosion. However, I think this is reading those statements in the worst faith possible given the scenario. In this case, there are essentially two explosions: The controlled detonation of the fireworks, and the explosion of the bomb disposal semi-truck. If you just read the LAPD as talking about the actual explosion of the truck itself, the statements make sense–to the best of my knowledge (and the media reporting) the LAPD do not in fact know why the bomb disposal vehicle exploded.
Now, you can claim that they are lying and that they messed-up. But they’re not currently saying that and have called in ATF investigators from across the country to determine why exactly the breach of containment occurred. So, that says to me that either (1) the LAPD wants to waste literally everyone’s time or (2) they legitimately don’t know why the explosion happened and want to figure it out to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. If it was police incompetence, which it very well might have been, it doesn’t seem like it was willful incompetence.
Second, the above account implies that the LAPD moved the explosives to a poor black neighborhood to detonate them. This is wrong. Instead, the explosives were not really moved. Most of the fireworks (between 4,990 and 4,985 of 5,000 pounds depending on your source) were transported to a remote disposal site where they were defused, detonated, etc. The 10-15 pounds of explosives in the truck were deemed unsafe to transport by the bomb disposal squad, and therefore remained in place. The reason why the detonation occurred around a poor black neighborhood is because that’s where the fireworks/explosives were being stored. There’s not any kind of malicious or willful moving, or malicious or willful disregard of the setting here. Or, at least I can’t find anything other than speculation from people who don’t seem to have any more information than I do.
Oh, and what was detonated likely weren’t fireworks. Multiple experts have said that based on the size of the containment breach and resulting explosion that the ordinance the police detonated were not fireworks for a local celebration. They were high-powered explosives. So, I also don’t think any claim that the detonation didn’t need to happen is particularly convincing.
Third, the official number appears to be 17 people, with 9-10 of them being officers/ bomb disposal squad members. So, the majority of those injured were part of the LAPD. Again, if there was any knowledge about responsibility, I seriously think that they would probably just cop to it at this point and fire the officers who were responsible (or allow their prosecution). There would be no real reason to defend their actions–especially since other officers were harmed.
Fourth, experts say that there’s a human error possibility (such as not sealing the chamber properly) or a mechanical failure, or both. However, these sorts of detonations occur nationwide and are not particularly uncommon. Containment units cost tens of thousands of dollars, but I’m not sure how reliable the claim is that this was a new unit or that the police wanted to “show it off.”
All-in-all, I think any intentionality here is in the eyes of people who don’t have all the information and are reading it into the sources that are available to prove their narrative as opposed to determining what happened. I don’t fault people who were originally responding to the incident for being suspicious, but it seems that in the following days those suspicions were not borne out.
