When I took office, the LAPD was shrinking and the hiring system was so broken it couldn’t even fill an academy. I drove applications to a four-year high and forced the city to overhaul that bureaucracy — so now we’re running full academy classes and growing the force again. Our communities are already seeing it: crime is down to its lowest level since the 1960s. And when crime spikes, I surge officers — patrols, mounted units, helicopters — the way we did against break-in rings hitting the Valley.
We’ve launched the first comprehensive encampment strategy to get unhoused Angelenos off the streets, including removing RVs that pose serious public safety concerns in our neighborhoods. Over more than 130 operations, thousands of people have been moved indoors, voluntarily, with zero arrests. That includes the Valley, where we cleared notorious encampments like the one along the 405 in Van Nuys. Street homelessness is down 17.5%, even while it rose 18% nationally, and LA has seen its first ever back-to-back annual decline in overall homelessness.
The budgets I’ve enacted have invested in hiring more firefighters, and we continue to work to make sure LAFD gets the resources they need. Nearly a third of fires in LA start with someone who’s homeless — so every person we move indoors is one less fire risk. And for a fire season that no longer ends, we went further at the Sepulveda Basin: cleared multiple large encampments, hauled out hundreds of tons of debris, and stood up a dedicated 26-person LAFD wildland crew to hold that risk down all year.
Streetlight funding hadn’t changed since 1996 — so I launched the largest streetlight program in city history, up to 60,000 solar lights, and issued LA’s first-ever Capital Infrastructure Program to finally attack the backlog on streets, sidewalks, trees, and more.
As for FIFA and the Olympics — they bring jobs, visitors and investment to LA, and the Valley even hosts its first-ever Olympic events at the Basin in 2028. I’m reversing decades of neglect so that our basic city services function the way we all should expect.
