After immigration raids sparked protests, downtown LA descended into chaos over the weekend. Right-leaning citizen journalist and political commentator Cam Higby was on the ground capturing some of the most dangerous (and viral) moments, including people burning Waymos and hurling rocks at police near City Hall. In this interview, Cam recalls the sequence of events and tries to make sense of it all — including why, exactly, the Waymos were targeted, the role of police (or lack thereof), and how various factions (ranging from responsible to anarchical) shaped the national narrative.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.

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Blake Dodge: Walk me through the timeline of the protests, from your perspective, leading up to the Waymos being set on fire.

Cam Higby: The first night I was here — the second night of the riots — I was out in Compton, and things were pretty bad out there. There were fewer people that night than there were in downtown LA the day they burned the Waymos, but there was a lot of looting. It was very violent in Compton.

[The next day in downtown LA] was definitely an escalation. Basically, everyone was gathered around the VA outpatient clinic, near the federal building.

Was there any reason for that?

No idea. I think because it was close to the federal building. They might’ve gotten pushed there by the police. They’d gone there a couple times already and tagged it up and messed with the clinic — I’m not sure why. So they were all gathered in the street outside of the VA clinic, and the police came in and formed a line, then opened it up so their police cars could leave. The protesters stood in front of the cars and said, ‘You’re not allowed to leave,’ basically. So the cops, through the loud speakers, said, ‘If you don’t stop impeding police officer actions, we will start indiscriminately arresting you.’

The protesters didn’t like that. So they started moving towards the police, pushing them back. Somebody picked up a brick, threw it through the windshield of the first cop car, then a black unmarked police SUV tried to come through with its sirens on. In the time it took for it to move 20 feet, it was just completely destroyed. The windshield was smashed. They smashed the back passenger window. They were throwing stuff through the back windshield.

I think that was the primary escalation — the point where it turned super violent, because after the police left that scene, it was chaos from that point on. And then the Waymos were burned not too long after.

Was it clear why protesters — or rioters — didn’t want the police to leave?

No, they did — they wanted the police to leave, but the police actually doing what they wanted just emboldened them. It was kind of just like, ‘Don’t let the cops do anything they want to do,’ basically. So, the protesters want them to leave the area, but they don’t want it to be on the police’s terms — they want it to be on their terms. So they ran at the police, threw glass bottles at them, threw bricks through their windshields, until the police had no choice but to turn around and go the other direction, away [from the protest].

We didn’t see LAPD for a long time after that. I think they completely left, actually. And the rest of the day, we were dealing with California Highway Patrol (CHP), who came to that underpass. And that was a really scary scene.

From there, how did we get to the burning Waymos?

From that point on, everyone moved from the VA clinic to covering as much ground as possible. There was no traffic for several blocks in LA because the protesters were just walking down the street. Cars [being driven by people] just stopped turning down the street — if I’m a logical person driving down the street and I see some terrible shit going on, I’m just going to say, ‘No, not today.’ A self-driving Waymo doesn’t know that.

So there were five Waymos literally just lined up on one street — first the protesters started tagging them, then they started beating them with skateboards and whatever else they could find on the ground. Then they started ripping the doors off. Then somebody said, ‘All right, let’s light it on fire.’

[Other accounts indicate the Waymos were deliberately called to the area by users on the app.]

The first one lights on fire. Everyone stands around and watches it burn for 20 minutes. Everyone’s afraid it’s going to blow up. ‘It’s a lithium battery, we shouldn’t be breathing this.’ Then the next one gets lit on fire. Everyone says ‘No, no, no — don’t do it.’ And everyone stands around and watches the second Waymo burn for 10 minutes. Then the next two get lit on fire. And I didn’t see the last one get lit because I had left at some point. But when I came back, there were five distinct piles of former Waymo fused to the ground.

I’m surprised how disintegrated they actually get. I mean, there’s nothing left.

So are you kind of saying that the Waymos being lit on fire was somewhat of a consequence of no other cars being around?

No, I think it’s a consequence of no police being around. I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily put it past them to jack somebody out of their car and light it on fire. I think I saw that happen the other day, but it’s more rare — as opposed to an unoccupied vehicle getting vandalized or a police vehicle being vandalized. I think it was an opportunity. There’s no police around. These are electric vehicles. Nobody’s in them. They think there’s no consequences. But in reality, a lot of people just inhaled a lot of really bad stuff, and whatever company owns those Waymos just lost however much money. And the city has to pay people to clean it up.

We’ve been looking at the Waymo thing through kind of a symbolic lens, because it’s this captivating image. Elon Musk retweeted the picture of the guy waving the Mexican flag standing on top of the burning Waymo. And I think — especially in tech circles — it was sort of like, ‘Whoa.’ Because Waymo’s owned by Google, and it just felt like — ‘Is this intentional? Is this a jab at power?’

It looks pretty symbolic, but I think it was just like, ‘Hey, if we light this on fire, who’s going to get in trouble?’

As the second Waymo was being lit on fire, a lot of people with megaphones — maybe leaders or organizers of the protest — started showing up. The people lighting the fires were like a rebel faction within the protest. More like: ‘I do what I want, fuck everything else.’ But the organizer-type people were like, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t light it on fire. It’s dangerous.’ And then the rogue faction was like, ‘Fuck you. Fuck Trump. If he’s going to do this to our families, this is what we’re going to do to him.’ And I’m kind of sitting here, thinking, ‘I don’t think Trump really cares if a Waymo is being burned in Los Angeles, but hey, go off, bro. Go off.’

‘You’re just making content for him.’

So you’re saying the adults with megaphones were like, ‘Hey, don’t do that.’ But this rebel faction was just out for blood?

Yeah. And both sides come in all shapes and sizes and ages. But I will say the majority of people who were out on Sunday were part of the rogue faction. I mean, most people were throwing rocks at police cars. Most people were doing some kind of damage, whether it was tagging, or lighting a dumpster fire, or whatever. I mean, when we were on that overpass, and they were throwing rocks at the police cruisers, anywhere I looked, it wasn’t just one person doing it — the whole crowd was getting in on it.

Damn.

Then yesterday, they came out and did an optics overhaul. Everywhere they went, the protesters put their hands up in the air and chanted, ‘PEACE-FUL PRO-TEST.’ But as they’d be chanting that, like a firework would go off right in front of me. Or a glass bottle would zip by my head.

And they were using these American flags, talking about how it’s important they wave American flags so that the optics look good.

Who are these people, in your mind? Are these the same responsible people with megaphones from the other day? Where did they come from?

No, I think it’s all organized. I think some days they’re told to let loose. Some days they’re told to reign it in. Because clearly there was some optimal coordinating here yesterday.

Can you elaborate there? I saw in one of your videos people were handing out American flags.

That was my friend Aldo’s. But yeah, I can confirm that that’s all true. And I think they wanted to get arrested on Monday because it was their ‘optically peaceful’ day. And to be honest, the police did arrest an entire street worth of people. The people weren’t being violent — just unlawfully assembling, which is the like least severe crime you could be arrested for at one of these things.

It racks my brain — why is it that LAPD did nothing on Sunday? Between Saturday and Sunday, I saw maybe one, two arrests total, and they weren’t the Waymo burners. They weren’t the people throwing rocks at the police. They were people who maybe got too close to the police line.

Then on Monday, the police decide, oh we’re just going to have a line at one end of the street, and one at the other end of the street — we’re going to enclose everybody in the street, and arrest every single person? When they’re not being particularly violent? That’s exactly what the protesters wanted. They wanted to be arrested for allegedly being peaceful because optically, it makes them look good, it makes LAPD look bad, and it justifies continuing the riots.

Could you tell me a little bit about your politics? It seems like you’re right leaning.

Well, I love my job. I love what I do. But it is a little disheartening to me, seeing the police officers get treated like absolute subhuman pieces of garbage all day, especially when they’re just trying to do their jobs. Most of them probably really care about their communities, and people are getting in their faces saying the most vile stuff ever. Police officers already have an incredibly awful job, as is.

My dad was a paramedic, and he used to have to go respond to the most horrific scenes ever. And we lived in a very small area. So the majority of what they’re dealing with isn’t, like, machine gunning black people in the streets. The majority of the things they’re dealing with are overdoses, suicides, extremely bloody, gory, not fun things to deal with mentally. And now they have to deal with all these people berating them in the streets.

But also, I think the police were clearly getting orders from the top to ‘Do nothing,’ at least on Saturday and Sunday. And so I don’t understand because I mean, the AM/PM gas station in Compton was picked clean. There were dudes outside with women, saying, ‘Hey, what do you want to drink?’ And then they would just walk into the gas station and steal whatever the girl wanted.

That place was completely ravaged. They cleaned out the cash register, cleaned out all the drinks, the cigarettes, all that stuff.

And everyone’s just talking about the damage to physical property. But [on Sunday], you had at least a dozen officers stranded under the underpass for hours. Because CHP had this terrible idea to drive down the freeway, then push up into the protesters. But the protesters were on the overpass. And so as the police cruisers zip by, they’re dropping cinder blocks on the moving vehicles, which can kill people.

Eventually, it came to a point where there were so many bricks, cinder blocks, electric scooters, bikes, and whatever else they could get their hands on being dropped on the police cars that the police had to stop under the underpass because it was the only place that the protesters couldn’t get them. And that’s California Highway Patrol, who are known for not screwing around. So they’re trapped under there. And the protesters are just pelting these cars for hours with stones, bricks, whatever. Eventually the protesters start throwing cardboard, mass amounts of cardboard down there. And I don’t even know where they got it, but they started throwing tinder — literally like hay and small shreds of paper — off the overpass, onto the front of the police cars. And at one point, they threw some lit tinder off the overpass, and the first cop car caught on fire.

So the cop car is now completely on fire, at least the front of it, and a police officer kind of comes closer to the edge of the underpass where he’s not fully covered. And he uses the fire extinguisher to extinguish the fire on the front of the police cruiser just so it doesn’t explode and kill them. And somebody pegged him right in the face with a brick. He had to stop, and then I think somebody took over from further under the underpass. But I mean, it was just super scary.

It sounds like you have a question around why weren’t the police doing more on Sunday?

Yeah, on Sunday, the police told my colleague, ‘We’re allowed to defend ourselves in the immediate, but we’re not allowed to do anything outside of that — and that comes from the top.’ So if somebody does something extremely illegal, like high-level felony offenses, they could probably arrest them. And there were a couple incidents like that. But as far as I know, the Waymo burners, none of those people were held accountable.

None of the people who looted the AM/PM in Compton were held accountable — and they couldn’t be, because the people who robbed the AM/PM were literally everyone on the street. Everyone had a Michelob Ultra or a Twisted Tea or something from the refrigerator in that gas station. There were people who came in with massive sacks and just scraped all the cigarettes they could into the bag, or robbed the register — but Sunday was really bad. I don’t think a lot of people realize how bad Sunday was. You could walk anywhere in that area downtown, and it was just like, you’re going to see a fire, or a parking kiosk on fire, its cash register is on the ground outside of it, all the documents are on the ground outside of it, the car keys are just scattered around the parking lot. And then there’s a guy doing donuts over here. Go a mile in a different direction, and there’s glass all over the road. I don’t know, it was insane. Just complete anarchy.

So your colleague heard this directly from an officer? That they could only defend themselves ‘in the immediate’? What does that mean?

Yeah. I think it means if they’re facing immediate bodily harm, they can retaliate and use force ‘in the immediate.’

But in general, the majority of Sunday, there was basically zero LAPD presence until later in the day. And the CHP presence — they were trapped under the underpasses for literally five hours. So the streets just belonged to the protesters the whole day.

Well, no wonder we saw those images of people on top of burning cars if there’s no police presence that particular day.

Yeah. And the police did come in at night. They got pretty serious then. I don’t know if anyone was arrested. But they were using a lot of munitions.

Tell me a little bit more about what influenced your political views. Part of why I’m asking is — our understanding of protests and riots, it always fractures according to the framing of different coalitions. And I’m just curious to get a little more of a sense of your own perspective and what shaped it.

My parents didn’t really talk about politics growing up. I didn’t have any kind of political compass as a child. My mom never talked about politics. I think my mom probably was a Democrat most of her life, but then flipped because of me.

I do a lot of research and I try to form my own opinions. I don’t consume much political content. If I consume any political content, it’s almost always leftist or liberal content. I don’t like watching my own side. I go on a lot of conservative shows — I was on Fox News I think three times yesterday. I’ll probably do Tim Pool here soon. But I don’t watch Tim Pool. I don’t watch Fox News. And the reason is because I already agree with them. I don’t need to hear what they have to say. I’m happy to be on their shows, but I’m already thinking the same thing you’re thinking.

Did you get red pilled at some point?

No, I never really got red pilled. It was kind of just a slow crawl to the right, starting with the 2016 election, which was really the first time Democrats abandoned the immigration platform. They kind of moved towards a more, ‘We don’t really think illegal immigration is that bad’ kind of platform…

I was kind of like, ‘Well, this is a little silly, because everyone has always said illegal immigration is bad.’ And it is — you need border laws. If you don’t enforce illegal immigration, you don’t have border laws, because your laws are only as good as your enforcement mechanism. And if you don’t enforce your laws, you don’t have them. So at that point, I was kind of like, ‘Okay, I agree with Trump on all this stuff.’

And then there was just a series of different things.

What are some of your political takeaways from the LA riots? I was catching up on the left-leaning takes, and they were saying the ICE raids were immoral, an act of terror, all this stuff. And I guess it escalated from there. But then the riots themselves, the protests themselves, became this other animal.

Walking away, what are your takeaways?

Saying ICE raids are an act of terrorism or immoral has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. It’d be like if I took seven shots of vodka, got in my car and drove down the road, and then when the police arrested me and took me away, I called my arrest an immoral act of terrorism.

You don’t have a right to violate federal code and then incite riots when you get arrested. It’s a violation of Section 1325 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code to improperly enter this country. And it’s not just because you didn’t get permission from immigration officials — it’s also because you skirted inspection. When you came here, you could have had 20 pounds of fentanyl on you, and law enforcement wouldn’t have known. So not only are you not a US citizen, you’re not inspected. Who knows what you’re bringing in? You know, for everyone who thinks that guns are the worst thing on the planet, you could be bringing in a Javelin missile launcher... But nobody seems to care when it’s happening. I just don’t understand it.

And then you have Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom getting on the news, saying ‘Don’t buy into Trump’s chaos. This is the time to be strong.’

It’s like — there’s no chaos from Trump. Trump isn’t causing chaos. It’s actually your city that’s in chaos. Los Angeles is in utter chaos, and it’s because you’re not doing anything about it.

To be clear, the National Guard and the Marines are at the federal building. But they’re not allowed to leave. They’re stuck there, on federal property, because they have not been deputized by local authorities here in Los Angeles. They were deputized in Santa Ana, but they need permission from the local authority that has jurisdiction... But the city won’t do it. So they do not leave the building. They’re rarely seen. They are just there to defend federal property, and that is it.

They are not causing any chaos, but Karen Bass is causing chaos.

She said something the other day to the effect of, ‘You have no idea how afraid these people are.’ And I’m like, these people are not afraid. They’re out in downtown LA lighting Waymos on fire, which acts as a smoke flare for their location. They’re looting stores in broad daylight in Compton without a mask on. These people are not afraid. The last thing these people are is afraid. They are emboldened. Because Karen Bass is doing nothing about it. They can riot all day, and she’s not going to tell the LAPD to arrest them — she’s going to tell them to do the opposite. And they will continue to do this until she cracks down.

Well, I’m glad you’re okay, and I appreciate you being there. The direct footage is really helpful for people like me just trying to make sense of what’s happened.

I just hope it ends soon so I can go home. That’s my biggest concluding thought. I think that it probably won’t end? I hope it will, but it probably won’t.

The LAPD did not immediately respond to Pirate Wires’ request for comment.