Restraining Order for Black Lives Matter Leader
Via L.A. Weekly:
The president of the Los Angeles Police Commission has filed a request for a temporary restraining order against a prominent member of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, alleging a pattern of stalking and violent threats. According to the order, the commission president feared for his life and the safety of his family.
The Black Lives Matter activist, Trevor Gerard, denies the allegations, which he says distort the truth and are politically motivated.
Matt M. Johnson, who’s been police commission president since September 2015, alleges in the complaint that Gerard stalked him at his home and at the private law office where he works, angrily demanding to speak with him. Johnson also alleges that Gerard mouthed violent threats to Johnson from the audience at board meetings and made threatening statements, including “a gratuitous reference” to Johnson’s children.
Gerard, 35, says the commission president deliberately took statements and actions of his out of context in retaliation for Black Lives Matter L.A.’s confrontational style of activism. “I never told him that he should be afraid of me,” Gerard tells L.A. Weekly. “I never told him to meet me outside. I never threatened him with any kind of physical violence. ”
The City Attorney’s Office filed for the restraining order on Johnson’s behalf on Dec. 19, one day after a local coalition of activists, including members of Black Lives Matter L.A., staged a demonstration outside Johnson’s private residence in Sherman Oaks. Two days before the restraining order was filed, on Dec. 17, the activists gained entry to the entertainment law firm in Century City where Johnson is managing partner.
“The people who sit on the commission board largely have acted as a rubber-stamp body for the extreme levels of violence that LAPD has been engaging in,” Gerard says of the impetus for the decision to protest at commissioners’ homes and businesses. “And they have become too comfortable with the way that we’re forced to engage them in that meeting space, which is in the LAPD headquarters itself.”
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