The Los Angeles Police Department has been denied $3 million in federal aid for law enforcement. While there is no official announcement as to why, it is more than likely that it has everything to do with LA’s "sanctuary city" status for harboring illegal aliens. Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have repeatedly said they would strip funding from such sanctuary cities. Now they are.
The L.A. Times reports: This year, L.A. officials applied for more than $3 million in federal funding to help bring the same program to Harvard Park, a South L.A. neighborhood scarred by violence.
The request was denied.
The U.S. Department of Justice hasn’t offered the LAPD an explanation of why the department didn’t receive any of the $98 million in grants recently awarded to scores of law enforcement agencies across the nation. A spokesman for the federal agency declined to comment when asked by The Times last week.
But after the Trump administration’s repeated threats to withhold federal money from cities that don’t cooperate with its immigration crackdown, some LAPD officials said they believe the move was retaliatory ‐ and a troubling sign of what could come.
Steve Soboroff, president of the civilian Police Commission that oversees the LAPD, said that he believes the Justice Department denied the funding request because of the LAPD’s well-publicized, hands-off approach to immigration enforcement. Soboroff said he worries future funding may also be at risk.