In a recent profile by The Los Angeles Times, Councilmember Traci Park reaffirmed her support for expanding the city’s fire department, stating, “More resources lead to better outcomes.” At first glance, this sounds like a reasonable position, especially in a city increasingly vulnerable to climate-fueled wildfires. But Park’s record tells a very different story.
In 2023, Councilmember Park voted to cut $35.7 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget. The decision came just months before a destructive wildfire swept through Topanga, within the very district she represents. Firefighters warned at the time that the budget cuts would directly impact emergency response times, staffing, and readiness across the city. Yet Park chose to support the reductions anyway.
Her recent claim that more resources improve outcomes appears disconnected from her actual votes. The reality is that Traci Park has consistently prioritized the expansion of policing and surveillance over critical public safety services such as fire prevention, emergency response, and mental health care.
This is not an isolated instance of budgetary trade-offs. It reflects a broader governing philosophy in which public safety is narrowly defined through the lens of law enforcement. Park has repeatedly voted in favor of expanding the Los Angeles Police Department’s reach, including supporting massive increases in overtime and backing a $15 million real-time surveillance network for the Westside. At the same time, she has supported policies that do nothing to expand access to housing, social services, or non-carceral responses to crisis.
Her record on public safety is especially concerning when viewed in the context of how she responded to one of the most disturbing police killings in recent memory. Just one month after Park took office, Keenan Anderson, a Black teacher and father, was tased to death by LAPD officers less than a mile from her home in Venice. Anderson’s death occurred during the first week of January 2023 and generated national outrage. Park waited a full week to issue a statement, which deflected blame from the police and instead emphasized Anderson’s mental health. When Black organizers approached her at City Hall to demand accountability, she refused to engage and called the police on them.
This silence is consistent with Park’s longstanding alignment with law enforcement. Her 2022 campaign for City Council was heavily bankrolled by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which spent over $1.5 million on her behalf. She was endorsed by eight law enforcement organizations and has reliably advanced their agenda at City Hall. From her motion encouraging teachers and social workers to become police officers, to her vocal support for controversial military-grade equipment such as LAPD’s robotic surveillance dog, Park has demonstrated a commitment to expanding police power at nearly every turn.
Her career prior to elected office is equally revealing. As an attorney, Park specialized in defending municipalities against civil rights claims, including cases of police misconduct and racial harassment. She worked for law firms known for union-busting and for defending clients such as Raytheon and Joe Arpaio’s sheriff’s department. Since she took office, her former firm has seen its contracts with the City of Los Angeles grow from $100,000 to over $1.3 million, much of it allocated for defending police officers in misconduct cases. This raises serious questions about conflicts of interest and her continued financial alignment with the institutions she once represented in court.
When Park says “more resources lead to better outcomes,” we must ask: for whom? Her consistent pattern of defunding services that protect and support residents, while pouring public money into policing and surveillance, reveals who she believes deserves investment and protection.
In a district increasingly threatened by wildfires, housing insecurity, and a growing need for non-police emergency response, Park’s choices have left residents more vulnerable. Her rhetoric about public safety does not match her record. If she truly believed in allocating resources for better outcomes, she would not have voted to cut fire department funding or expand the carceral system under the guise of safety.
Councilmember Park’s actions show us clearly where her priorities lie. Angelenos in Council District 11 deserve a representative who invests in care, not punishment. True public safety will never come from surveillance cameras, robot dogs, or increased police patrols. It will come from housing, mental health care, well-funded emergency services, and strong community infrastructure. Unfortunately, those are not the outcomes Traci Park has chosen to fight for.
