A18 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020
tools available to assist in bring-
ing anyone responsible to jus-
tice.”
Employees at Superior Gro-
cers in Compton, near the loca-
tion of the shooting, said they
knew something was wrong Sat-
urday night when they heard
screaming.
Store sales manager Juan Ceja,
33, said he heard people outside
shouting “gunshot, gunshots.”
He ran out of the big-box store to
find scared employees and doz-
ens of people running.
“Why would you come shoot
two officers who were just in
their squad car?” he wondered,
saying it “makes no sense.”
Some of his employees were
not as concerned as he was about
the police, he said. “One of the
guys said back, ‘That’s what they
deserve,’ ” Ceja recalled. “And I
was like, ‘They were just in a
squad car, what did they deserve
to get those gunshots?’ ”
Both police and protesters’
tactics drew scrutiny after dem-
onstrations formed Saturday
outside St. Francis Medical Cen-
ter, where the deputies received
treatment.
In tweets, the sheriff’s depart-
ment said protesters were
“blocking the entrance & exit” of
the hospital’s emergency room.
In videos of the event, protesters
gather on paths outside the med-
ical center and a person can
heard saying, “I hope they die.”
The department also announced
the arrests of two people: a male
protester who “refused to com-
ply” after a dispersal order and a
woman “later identified as a
member of the press.”
Josie Huang, a reporter for
local new organizations KPCC
and LAist, said she was detained
and cited on a charge of obstruct-
ing an officer, despite wearing a
lanyard identifying her as press.
She posted video of officers tell-
ing her to back up as she films an
arrest. In another clip, she says
she is a reporter. “You guys are
hurting me!” she says.
Police officials said Huang was
arrested because she interfered
with another arrest and “did not
identify herself as press.”
Journalists quickly con-
demned the arrest as a violation
of Huang’s rights, calling for the
charge to be dropped. The sher-
iff’s department did not respond
to questions about Huang.
Sunday afternoon, the scene
outside St. Francis Medical Cen-
ter was calm. Officers said the
protests had ended Saturday.
Three members of the sheriff’s
department stood outside the
hospital’s entrance holding gifts,
balloons, a teddy bear and a
letter addressed to “Our Hero.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Sonmez and Knowles reported from
Washington.Los Angeles. Police agencies, in-
cluding the sheriff’s department
there, have faced mounting an-
ger and demonstrations over
deadly force deployed against
people of color.
But politicians and communi-
ty leaders — including promi-
nent critics of law enforcement —
quickly denounced Saturday’s
violence, as the FBI and Justice
Department both offered their
resources.
In an early-morning tweet,
Trump, who has campaigned on
“law and order,” called for a
forceful response.
“Animals that must be hit
hard!” he said. Later Sunday
morning, Trump tweeted of the
officers: “If they die, fast trial
death penalty for the killer. Only
way to stop this!” At a roundtable
in Nevada, the president spoke of
stiffer penalties for violence, say-
ing that if a suspect is appre-
hended, “we are going to get
much faster with our courts and
we have to get much tougher
with our sentencing.”
Biden also condemned the
“cold-blooded shooting” in a
tweet Sunday morning.
“Acts of lawlessness and vio-
lence directed against police offi-
cers are unacceptable, outra-
geous, and entirely counterpro-
ductive to the pursuit of greater
peace and justice in America —
as are the actions of those who
cheer such attacks on,” Biden
said in a statement Sunday after-
noon. “Those who perpetrate
these crimes must be brought to
justice, and, if convicted, face the
full brunt of the law.”
And Ben Crump, a prominent
lawyer representing families of
Black men and women killed by
police — including the relatives
of a man fatally shot by Los
Angeles sheriff’s deputies —
urged people to come forward
with information about the at-
tack, after reiterating his calls to
hold the Los Angeles Sheriff’s
Department “accountable for
systemic brutality.”
Violence such as the two depu-
ties’ shooting “is NOT the an-
swer,” he tweeted.
The injured deputies, a 31-
year-old woman and a 24-year-
old man, were both sworn into
office 14 months ago, officials
said at a news conference. Both
suffered multiple gunshot
AMBUSH FROM A1 wounds, according to authori-
ties, and underwent surgery Sat-
urday night.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva called
the shooting a “cowardly act,”
echoing the words of California
Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Saw-
yer (D) e arlier at the news confer-
ence. Jones-Sawyer called the
deputies “heroes,” and Villanue-
va said the attack was a reminder
of the tough and dangerous job
facing law enforcement.
“Seeing somebody just walk
up and start shooting on them,
it’s — it pisses me off,” Villanueva
said. “It dismays me at the same
time.”
Authorities have not discussed
the shooter’s potential motive.
The sheriff’s department said
Sunday that no updates on the
investigation were available.
Last year, 48 law enforcement
officers were killed by an offend-
er “while engaged in or on ac-
count of the performance of
their official duties,” according
to the FBI. Villanueva, who on
Sunday tweeted appreciation for
“overwhelming support” from
across the country, expressed
concern about other suspects
opening fire on officers “unpro-
voked.”
The deputies, part of a trans-
portation detail, were shot about
7 p.m. Saturday and were able to
radio for help, according to the
sheriff’s department. The shoot-
er fled on foot. Sheriff’s Capt.
Kent Wegener said Saturday
night that despite video captur-
ing the incident, authorities have
only a “very, very generic suspect
description” provided by one of
the wounded deputies: D etails
captured through a “fisheye
lens,” he said, are “going to be
deceiving.”
Sunday afternoon, the sheriff’s
department announced a
$100,000 reward for information
“leading to the arrest and convic-
tion of the suspect,” who was
described as a black man be-
tween 28 and 30 years old in dark
clothing.
More than a dozen homicide
detectives were on the scene
Saturday night, along with other
specialists and district attorney
staff. Calling the shooting “evil in
its purest form,” Justice Depart-
ment spokeswoman Kerri Kupec
tweeted that Attorney General
William P. Barr is “monitoring
the situation” and that his de-
partment will “use all federal
Sheri≠’s deputies
shot while sitting
in their squad car
PATRICK T. FALLON/REUTERSJAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESSTOP: A Los Angeles County
Sheriff ’s Department vehicle is
towed Sunday from the scene
where two deputies were shot
in an ambush-style shooting in
Compton, Calif., about 7 p.m.
Saturday. The deputies were
part of a transportation detail.
RIGHT: Los Angeles County
Sheriff Alex Villanueva, left,
said that the shooting of the
deputies was a “cowardly act”
and that it w as a reminder of
the tough and dangerous job
facing law enforcement.BY RACHEL LERMAN,
ELLEN NAKASHIMA
AND JAY GREENEOracle emerged late Sunday as
the surprise victor in wooing
short-term video app TikTok,
which is proposing a compromise
to the Trump administration that
would allow it to potentially keep
its current ownership, according
to people familiar with the discus-
sions.
The people, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity to discuss
the deliberations freely, said that
TikTok recently put forward a pro-
posal to the U.S. government that
would allow its Chinese parent
company, ByteDance, to retain
ownership but outsource cloud
management of the data. One of
the people said that TikTok chose
Oracle as its U.S. “technology part-
ner” Sunday afternoon and that
the companies brokered the deal
in an attempt to satisfy regulator
concerns.
Another possible element of the
proposal, according to two of the
people, is that ByteDance could
move its headquarters outside of
China to alleviate concerns that
the parent company would be sub-
ject to Chinese laws that require
firms, if directed, to share data in
their systems with the govern-
ment.
Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin and Commerce Secre-
tary Wilbur Ross, who spoke late
last week, are open to hearing the
offer, said a senior administration
official, speaking on the condition
of anonymity because of the mat-
ter’s sensitivity.
“The deal, if it happens, is going
to have to address our underlying
national security concerns,” the
official said.
But a former U.S. official said
that while such an approach
might address some of the secu-
rity concerns, “it’s well short of a
U.S. company taking over the asset
and the algorithm, and politically,
it would be a massive climb-down
from what the president said he
was going to accomplish with
this.”
“It’s not a climb-down,” the ad-
ministration official said. Any deal
would have to be approved by an
interagency group tasked with en-
suring that national security con-
cerns are mitigated, the official
said. “All the details are not out,”
the official said.
Oracle’s executives have close
ties to the president, and the com-
pany may be well positioned to
meet Trump’s expectations after
the president took an active role in
raising concerns about TikTok.
The deal would probably involve
Oracle, a business software giant
best known for selling database
technology to corporations to help
run their operations, taking a
stake in the company, one of the
people said.
President Trump previously is-
sued an order that would ban the
app i n the United S tates beginning
Sept. 20. He followed that with a
second order that would essential-
ly require parent company Byte-
Dance to divest from its opera-
tions in the United States.
TikTok has repeatedly insisted
that it is not a national security
threat and that it does not share
any U.S. customer information
with the Chinese government.
Both Microsoft and Oracle were
bidding for the business, which
has surged in popularity, particu-
larly with young users. TikTok had
91.9 million monthly active users
in the United States in June, up
from 26.7 million in February
2019.
Microsoft said in a blog post
Sunday that its offer to acquire
TikTok’s U.S. operations was re-
jected. Microsoft was the first to
confirm that it was courting Tik-
Tok this summer as Trump threat-
ened to ban the app over national
security concerns.
“We are confident our proposal
would have been good for TikTok’susers, while protecting national
security interests,” Microsoft said
in its post. “To do this, we would
have made significant changes to
ensure the service met the highest
standards for security, privacy, on-
line safety, and combating disin-
formation, and we made these
principles clear in our August
statement.”
Walmart had joined Microsoft’s
bid for TikTok. Walmart said in a
statement Sunday that it is still
interested in investing in TikTok
and will continue talks with Byte-
Dance.
Oracle and TikTok declined to
comment. The White House did
not have an immediate comment.
The president said last month
that Oracle was “a great company”
that “could handle” buying Tik-
Tok.
While Oracle never seemed like
a logical acquirer of TikTok’s U.S.assets, it had one thing going for it
during its pursuit: a close relation-
ship with Trump. Oracle’s chief
executive, Safra Catz, has dined at
the White House with Trump and
served on the president’s transi-
tion team after his election in- Oracle co-founder and chair-
man Larry Ellison hosted a fund-
raiser for Trump this year.
Earlier this year, Ellison helped
convince Trump, after a series of
conversations, that chloroquine
and hydroxychloroquine, two old
anti-malarial drugs, could be
game-changing treatments for
covid-19, the disease caused by the
novel coronavirus. Ellison helped
arrange a partnership between
Oracle and the federal govern-
ment to crowdsource that idea by
collecting data in real time from
doctors trying out those and other
unproven drugs on covid-19 pa-
tients.
Trump has said that a “very
substantial portion” of the acqui-
sition price for TikTok would have
to be paid to the Treasury because
he helped manufacture the deal.
While lawyers familiar with inter-
national transactions called such
an arrangement unusual, it’s pos-
sible that Ellison and Catz, as sup-
porters of the Trump campaign for
reelection, could figure out a way
to satisfy the president’s efforts to
secure that payment.
The TikTok deal has been facing
a series of obstacles for more than
a month and was thrown another
hurdle in recent weeks when the
Chinese government got involved,
slowing the bidding process. Bei-
jing established export rules that
prevent the sale of some artificial-
intelligence technology that prob-
ably includes TikTok’s personal-
ized recommendation algorithm.
The algorithm is TikTok’s secretsauce, technology that makes the
service so popular and addictive to
its users. Without it, the compa-
ny’s value to an acquirer is signifi-
cantly diminished.
Had Microsoft been able to ac-
quire TikTok’s U.S. business, said
Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. analyst Brad
Reback, the company was well po-
sitioned to leverage its operations
to make a deal pay off.“It’s an extraordinary asset with
all sorts of ways to make money,”
Reback said.
Oracle, though, doesn’t have
the operations, such as an online
advertising business, to make an
acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. opera-
tions pay off, he said.
“Oracle’s experience with con-
sumer assets is zero,” Reback said.
While the phrase “technology
partner” is vague, Reback said the
agreement could call for Oracle to
merely provide rudimentary
cloud infrastructure services, es-
sentially basic storage and com-
puting functions.
TikTok previously filed a legal
challenge against the govern-
ment’s order to ban the video app.
If the ban proceeds, TikTok users
in the United States would prob-
ably still be able to use the app if
they had already downloaded it,
but wouldn’t be able to get any
updates. The parameters of the
ban are still unclear, and it is up to
the Commerce Department to de-
fine them.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]TikTok chooses Oracle as U.S. ‘technology partner,’ rejecting Microsoft bid
CHRIS DELMAS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
V ideo app TikTok had 91.9 million monthly active users in the United States in June. Citing national
security concerns, President Trump had issued an order to ban it in this country beginning S ept. 20.C hinese parent company
seeks compromise to
retain ownership of app“The deal, if it happens,
is going to have to
address our underlying
national security
concerns.”
a senior administration official,
speaking on the condition of
anonymity