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Unhoused Residents and a Chef Getting Off Work Get Unintentionally Caught in Violent Police Actions Against Protesters in DTLA

A Black woman in a wheelchair who did not appear to be involved in the protests found herself trapped among dozens of protesters. When a line of police advanced towards her and the remaining protesters, two people put their bodies on the line a sthey struggled to move her wheelchair away from the police.

1:07 PM PDT on June 17, 2025

Protesters help a disabled woman in a wheelchair as LAPD pushes protesters down W. First St. away from the LAPD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, Calif., on Saturday, June 14, 2025, during the No Kings anti-Trump protest partnered with the activist organization 50501. More than 2000 cities across 50 states participated in the “No Kings protest, with Los Angeles drawing an estimated minimum crowd size of 30,000 according to LAPD. Since June 6, 2025, anti-ICE demonstrations have been ongoing daily in downtown Los Angeles.

(Jake Crandall)

|Photo by Jake Crandall for L.A. TACO.

Cesar was on his way home when he got caught in a giant cloud of tear gas, the same substance banned in warfare, outside of City Hall in Downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, after the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deployed the chemical agent to disperse a large crowd of hundreds of people protesting the recent ICE immigration raids in Los Angeles.

Cesar wasn’t there to protest, though.

He was trying to get out of DTLA before a curfew went into effect at 8 PM.