A.M. Brief: Thousands Flock To DTLA After Lakers Win Title

The Lakers are the champs, which should be a cause for celebration, not an excuse for breaking windows and tagging buses. Also this morning: Unofficial ballot boxes are causing confusion, another massive March in support of Armenia, and a racist Zoom-bomb strikes an online UCLA class. Here are your quick bits for Monday, October 12, your third annual Indigenous People’s Day in Los Angeles.

Morning News Rundown

The Los Angeles Lakers are your 2020 NBA champions. That’s the good news. The bad news is that some Angelenos used the pretense of a Lakers celebration for violence and mayhem. After last night’s clinching win, thousands flocked to Downtown L.A. Many were peaceful, some were not, and the large gathering ultimately led to bursts of looting, graffitiing, and broken windows. Fireworks were detonated, a Metro bus was tagged with spray paint, and 67 people were arrested. [ABC 7]

Unofficial ballot drop boxes have appeared in multiple California counties, leading to concerns of an intentional attempt to mislead voters. The boxes, which show verbiage denoting them as “official ballot” drop boxes, may have been bought and approved by the California Republican Party, according to reporting by the O.C. Register. [Newsweek]

Tens of thousands marched yesterday in support of Armenia over the country’s ongoing conflict with Azerbaijan and Turkey over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The protestors massed outside the Turkish Consulate in Beverly Hills in the afternoon. The LAPD estimates the crowd may have peaked at over 100,000 participants. [L.A. Times]

The western Joshua Tree is now being considered for special protections under the California Endangered Species Act. If “threatened status” is granted, it will be the first time a plant species has gained such protections specifically due to climate change. [The Guardian]

Time to learn a new term for the pandemic age: Zoom-bombing. This is when a Zoom session is hijacked. In this case, the bomber interrupted an online UCLA class to shout racist comments and homophobic slurs. University officials are now investigating. [CBS LA]

41 L.A. County children have been afflicted by a rare inflammatory syndrome linked to coronavirus infection. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome is a fairly rare and not well understood complication, and it’s unclear why some kids have been sickened while others have remained unaffected. [KTLA]