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'If You Love The City, Go Home': Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti Issues Curfew In LA After Days Of Unrest, Protests

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) -- Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti shared support for demanding justice and accountability after the death of George Floyd and encouraged people destroying property around L.A. to go home.

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RELATED: Protesters And Police Clash In Downtown Los Angeles 

A curfew was issued from 8 p.m. Saturday to 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning in the city of Los Angeles.

The mayor first limited the curfew to parts of downtown L.A., but as tensions continued to rise, the curfew was extended.

Other cities also followed suit by also issuing similar curfews.

Garcetti said rising tensions in the Beverly Hills and Fairfax areas prompted him to ask Gov. Newsom to deploy 500-700 members of the National Guard to the city, breaking from his initial stance that he didn't want things to get to that point in L.A.

"Violence is never the answer," he said on the phone with CBS2/KCAL9.

In his press conference on Saturday afternoon, the mayor reflected on the 1992 L.A. riots and discussed how he doesn't want a repeat of those encounters.

Garcetti praised the actions of people who are coming out to protest, saying that the coronavirus shouldn't stop calls for justice but that there should be order when doing so.

Black Lives Matter and other groups have independently organized protests around the country that were intended to be peaceful and follow physical distancing guidelines in response to police brutality cases that activists say have gone without seeing justice.

The mayor also spoke about systemic injustices of people of color and African Americans, specifically, in this country:

"So many people don't start equally at the starting line because they and their grandparents and their great grandparents didn't start equally."

Garcetti said that people who have been destroying police cars, setting them ablaze and vandalizing local businesses are doing a disservice to calls for justice in the cases of Floyd, Breona Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and other African Americans who have been killed in the U.S.

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