Dear Friend --

This morning I joined thousands of our residents cleaning up and repairing our city. To the organizers and those responding with compassion and kindness - Thank you.

What began as a peaceful protest yesterday turned violent and dangerous as looters and criminals vandalized and damaged small business in our city. These agitators do not represent the vast majority of community members that were demonstrating peacefully and with purpose.

We had no loss of life last night, no major injuries of police officers or firefighters, and only one major structure fire. Our police officers and firefighters acted heroically. I want to thank them, our agency partners, and the National Guard for their assistance.

Today, the City of Long Beach ordered a curfew effective at 1 p.m. in business districts and citywide at 4 p.m. today, June 1, for the safety of the public. This means no one should be traveling out on our public streets, avenues, alleys, parks, ways or any other public place in the City of Long Beach for the duration of this curfew, except as expressly authorized.

Law enforcement personnel, firefighting personnel, emergency health care providers, emergency medical personnel, civilians engaged in police or emergency work, individuals seeking emergency care, individuals traveling to and from their place of employment and representatives of the media are exempt. Securing and actively cleaning up businesses are exempt. To read more about our curfew, please click here.

In the meantime, the City’s Public Works Department has crews out boarding up windows and cleaning up graffiti as quickly as possible. I’d like to thank the men and women of the Long Beach Police and Fire Departments for keeping us all safe.

I ask everyone to stay home to ensure we continue to keep people safe.

Thank you,