Traci Park's Push to Expand the Surveillance State

Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park is doubling down on her vision of a heavily policed and surveilled city, with her push to install a Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) on the Westside. This move follows her long-standing pattern of expanding law enforcement’s presence in everyday life, despite increasing concerns about privacy violations, racial profiling, and the effectiveness of mass surveillance.

Traci Park has consistently supported policies that reinforce police power at the expense of civil liberties. In February 2023, she introduced a motion to encourage teachers and social workers to become police officers, a move widely criticized for further entrenching law enforcement in community spaces meant for support and rehabilitation. The following month, she urged her colleagues to support LAPD’s purchase of the controversial “robot dog,” a quadruped military surveillance robot manufactured by Boston Dynamics. The proposal was ridiculed by civil rights groups and even mainstream media, with Vice's Motherboard commenting that Park’s support for the device “highlights the power of well-funded police lobbyists to purchase influence in local governments.”

By February 2024, Park had expanded her surveillance ambitions, introducing a motion to establish a Real-Time Crime Center on the Westside after LAPD secured $15 million for an integrated surveillance network. These centers aggregate live surveillance feeds from a vast array of sources, including Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), gunshot detection systems, police helicopters, and even private homeowners' security cameras. The data is funneled into central monitoring hubs where officers can watch in real time, often using predictive policing software and AI-enhanced video analytics to assess threats—raising major concerns about civil liberties and the unchecked expansion of surveillance technology in public spaces.

With the expansion of Real-Time Crime Centers across U.S. cities, law enforcement agencies are amassing unprecedented amounts of data on people’s everyday movements. These centers create a permanent, large-scale surveillance infrastructure that is ripe for abuse. In Los Angeles, LAPD is actively seeking access to 10,000 cameras across the city as part of its growing surveillance network. Their grant application for state funding was submitted in October 2023, and a month later, the City Council and Board of Police Commissioners approved the budget item.

However, extensive research has shown that mass surveillance does not equate to increased safety. Instead, it disproportionately targets marginalized communities, leading to over-policing, racial profiling, and the erosion of civil liberties. Real-Time Crime Centers have been criticized for relying on biased AI and predictive policing algorithms that reinforce existing patterns of discrimination, falsely identifying people of color as suspects at higher rates.

Despite overwhelming evidence that surveillance-heavy policing leads to more harm than good, Traci Park remains a staunch advocate for expanding LAPD’s technological arsenal. Rather than investing in proven crime reduction strategies like mental health services, housing, and education, Park is pushing for more police cameras and real-time monitoring, effectively treating all residents as potential criminals.

Her motion prioritized the rollout of a Real-Time Crime Center in what she calls a “high-crime” area of the Westside, a classification that will likely lead to increased racial profiling of Black and Brown residents in communities already over-policed. With Traci Park championing the expansion of LAPD’s surveillance apparatus, Los Angeles is on track to become one of the most heavily monitored cities in the country. Her insistence on prioritizing law enforcement technology over social services reveals a disturbing trend: an ever-growing police state where privacy is sacrificed in the name of security theater.