Last Friday, during its first meeting of 2026, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously advanced a proposal that could change the way the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) responds to protests.
The proposal from Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez requests that the LAPD and various other city departments work with labor unions and immigrants’ rights organizations to come up with best practices and trainings for “marshals or stewards” that could be deployed at protests in place of cops, and instructs the LAPD to immediately incorporate a “graded response” model at protests, similar to other major cities such as New York and Boston.
The “graded response” model calls for police officers in regular uniforms to be deployed at protests before sending in heavily-armed officers in riot gear and specialized units such as Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), if needed. The approach relies heavily on communication between protesters and police.
Soto-Martinez’s motion cites a 2020 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation study by a group of researchers that interviewed officers from over a dozen police agencies around the country to identify “best practices to increase community safety while also safeguarding people’s constitutional rights.”
The researchers found that the use of "militarized police” at protests often leads to more conflict between police and demonstrators.