The nation’s news outlets picked up the story quickly last week out of downtown Los Angeles, where an immigration rally at MacArthur Park sparked a violent police reaction.

The LAPD police chief, William J. Bratton, was quick to express his displeasure. “Quite frankly, I was disturbed at what I saw,” Bratton told KNX-AM. He said the actions of some officers “were inappropriate in terms of use of batons and possible use of nonlethal rounds fired.”

It looks from reports like the rally turned ugly when protesters moved out of the confines of the park and into the streets. Rally organizers contend that the violence was initiated by a group of “anarchists” not affiliated with the rally itself.

Bratton agreed and said police were initially trying to deal with 50 to 100 “agitators.”

“The individuals were there to provoke police,” Bratton said. “Unfortunately, they got what they came for.” The New York Times also provides a lengthy summary piece of the event, which was organized around “a call for broad changes to immigration laws.”

For a period in the 1980s, I lived less than a block from MacArthur Park, at an apartment building named the Park Wilshire (You can see the proximity to MacArthur Park here). When I lived there, the park was not very family-friendly. There was a lot of violence, including gang and drug activities. It wasn’t a safe neighborhood by any stretch.

Obviously it’s been many years, and perhaps the area has changed. But if it’s anything like it was then, MacArthur Park is a pretty bad choice for place to hold a rally. No doubt the police over-reaction was at least in some small part related to the negative associations connected to the rally’s location. I’m also willing to bet that the “anarchists” and “agitators” didn’t have to travel far to enact some payback against the police, and were able to use the rally as cover.

Unfortunately the real victims of their violence were the innocents at the rally, the women and children who were put in danger, and the members of the media who were beaten and hurt. But there may well be victims beyond the rally itself, if the violence es an occasion for fostering more anti-immigrant sentiment in the US.

The NYT editorialized last week about the potential for a new immigration bill that would “eliminate or severely restrict whole categories of family-based immigration in favor of a system that would assign potential immigrants points based on age, skills, education, e and other factors.”

Family concerns are a huge factor motivating illegal immigration. The story of Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Alfredo Quinones-Hinjosa relates this fact. Dr. Quinones-Hinjosa admits that there is no justification for his entry into the US as an illegal immigrant twenty years ago.

“When I first came, I wasn’t thinking that I was breaking the law ing to this country. All I wanted to do is have enough money to eat, period. That’s all that I had in my mind, is that how can I make money so that I can at least put food on the table of my parents, my siblings, and my future children,” said Quinones-Hinjosa.

His story is one well worth reflecting on as our nation debates the issues surrounding immigration policy and enforcement.