Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti blasted house parties on Wednesday, saying that he would instruct city officials to cut off water and power to properties where “flagrant violations” of social distancing rules have taken place in recent days.
Garcetti was reacting to reports of large parties in the hills earlier this week, including one where people reportedly threw money from balconies — and where a gang-related shooting later killed one and wounded four people at the party.
Local ABC affiliate KABC-7 reported that “there was little social distancing and even fewer masks” at the party. The party was reportedly staged to shoot a music video, according to one partygoer. Prior to the shooting, police paid a visit after neighbors complained about the noise, but their warnings were ignored.
Parties are banned in Los Angeles County.
Garcetti warned that house parties and other such events “ripple throughout our entire community because the virus can quickly and easily spread.”
He also said that there had been “good news in the last two weeks,” as the number of new cases of coronavirus had been falling in the city, with L.A. hitting one million coronavirus tests (and 1.8 million in the county as a whole). Garcetti noted that there had recently been a 20% drop in the number of new cases, and that the transmission rate is 0.91.
Similar reductions in hospitalizations have taken place across Southern California.
Garcetti added that L.A. expressed condolences to victims of the recent explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, which is a sister city.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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