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Traci Park is Anti-Safety

Traci Park opposes safe-streets measures, sides with police lobbyists over civil rights, and pushes surveillance and car culture over real community safety, making LA less safe for everyone who walks, bikes, or simply wants to live free from over-policing.

Traci is the most rabid defender of the LAPD of any member of the city council, for good reason; the LA Police Protective League contributed a staggering $1.5 million to Traci’s 2022 campaign. During Traci’s time in office, LAPD killed 42 people in 2023, 45 people in 2024 , and so far have killed 13 people in 2025. The LA County jail system has also been in a deadly crisis during Traci’s tenure, with a record high 103 people dying in custody since 2023. Traci’s reliance on the LAPD as the sole arbiter of public safety places her constituents in direct and often deadly contact with LAPD and our jails.

Furthermore, Traci’s main tactic of addressing homelessness has been relentless sweeps of encampments, of which the main goal is to throw away people’s tents and possessions, not to protect or house these vulnerable constituents. Oftentimes lifesaving medications are thrown away alongside people’s sole means of shelter from inclement weather, directly leading to their deaths.

Traci has also campaigned aggressively against Measure HLA in 2024, a measure which ensures that LA is required to build street safety improvements, which passed with 63% of the vote. Traffic fatalities are the number one killer of children in Los Angeles county; by opposing traffic safety for pedestrians and cyclists, Traci actively supports vehicular violence.

This raises an essential question: which of Traci’s constituents are entitled to safety?

LAPD Violence

One month after Traci took office, a Black teacher named Keenan Anderson was tased to death by LAPD a mere four blocks from Traci’s home in Venice. Anderson was the cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Coullors, the killing inspired nationwide outrage. When two Black organizers questioned Traci about the incident, she refused to engage and called the police on them. Traci only acknowledged the murder after a vigil and protest for Keenan’s entirely unjustified murder was held in front of her house. In her statement, she rejected any criticism of LAPD, instead blaming it on Anderson’s “mental illness”.

The brutal extrajudicial murders and nonfatal shootings by LAPD are a tragic bleeding wound at the heart of this city. The killings disproportionately happen to Black and brown people, as do the rates of arrests. A single death at the hands of law enforcement should be unacceptable, and 100 deaths at the hands of LAPD during Traci’s time in office is a crisis. Close collaboration with such a deadly, racist institution is an abomination.

LAPD violence also drains the city of financial resources. During Traci’s first two years in office, Angelenos paid $259,518,063 in liability payouts 2023 and 2024. The vast majority of which came from civil rights violations and excessive use of force claims. These liability payouts for LAPD entirely dwarf all liability payments from other city departments (as demonstrated below). LA is currently in a severe budget deficit and the liability payments to LAPD are one of the most significant contributing factors. Park’s rabid insistence on defending increasing the police budget year after year is directly starving the rest of our city departments of resources.

LAPD’s violence is part of a disturbing national trend. Despite the fact that crime has been trending downward nationwide over the last few years, police killings in 2023 were the highest they’d been in over a decade. Since the Black Lives Matter uprisings in 2020, public sentiment has dramatically started to swing towards supporting alternatives to policing and incarceration to address public safety. Unarmed crisis response programs have had enormous success in neighborhoods of LA, the unarmed Metro ambassador program has seen dramatic improvements in safety on our metro system. Investments in job programs, minimum wage increases, eviction protections, community health clinics, parks, and after school programs are all proven methods of increasing public safety, without reliance on incarceration.

Programs that replace police with trained, unarmed responders have shown measurable success. In Los Angeles, the CIRCLE and Unarmed Model of Crisis Response (UMCR) pilots together have handled over 15,000 calls since launch, with more than 90% resolved without LAPD involvement. In Denver, the STAR program saw a 34% drop in low-level crime in its service areas and zero arrests or use-of-force incidents. CAHOOTS in Eugene, Oregon has operated for over 30 years and now diverts up to 20% of 911 calls away from police.
These programs save both lives and money. In LA, the average police response to a nonviolent call costs roughly five times more than an unarmed crisis team. Nationally, every dollar spent on housing, job training, and youth programs prevents multiple dollars in future policing and incarceration costs. By every measure—safety outcomes, cost efficiency, and community trust—alternatives to policing outperform traditional law enforcement.
LAPD is a deadly, expensive, and vestigial institution, an outdated department that can be dramatically reduced to fund public safety initiatives that actually prevent crime and ensure all Angelenos are safe.

Deadly Encampment Sweeps

Encampment sweeps are deadly. When people’s tents, blankets, and medications are confiscated, their odds of hospitalization or death rise sharply. A 2023 study by UCLA found that unhoused Angelenos who experienced a sweep were three times more likely to die within six months than those who were not displaced. During extreme heat or rain, losing shelter can mean fatal dehydration, hypothermia, or infection.
Criminalization compounds the harm. Arrests for “quality of life” offenses lead to jail exposure, where infectious disease and suicide rates are among the highest in the nation. The combination of repeated displacement and citation cycles traps people in crisis rather than helping them exit homelessness.
Traci Park’s policies have prioritized these violent “cleanups” over real housing or care. Her office repeatedly partners with LAPD and Sanitation to conduct sweeps with little to no coordination with outreach teams. These are not safety operations—they are forced displacements that endanger lives.

Traffic Violence

In 2024 Angelenos voted on Measure HLA to require the city to implement bus and bike lanes, crosswalks, and other traffic calming measures whenever streets are repaved. This measure is desperately needed, there were more traffic fatalities than murders in Los Angeles in 2023 and 2024. Children are more likely to die from traffic fatalities than gun violence in Los Angeles.

One would think that Traci Park would treat this as an urgent crisis, considering how she claims to be focused on public safety. Instead, Traci campaigned relentlessly against measure HLA at the behest of the firefighters union, another of her biggest contributors. She claimed HLA would make it harder for firefighters to cut through traffic in emergencies, but in reality bus lanes make it easier for firetrucks to maneuver quickly. The real reason Park opposes traffic calming measures is simple: she believes in prioritizing the convenience of drivers over the lives of pedestrians and cyclists. Fury from a loud minority of constituents in Council District 11 against traffic calming measures spurred recall efforts against previous city councilmember Mike Bonin, an anti-incumbent sentiment which Traci rode into office.

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