public safety – Los Angeles has seen homicides fall to levels not recorded since the 1960s, with shootings less frequent across parts of the city. But in the mayoral race, homelessness, drug use, and how the LAPD is funded and run are driving debate—especially as challengers
For years, L.A. neighborhoods could feel awash in gang violence. Now, in many places, residents say they can go weeks—sometimes months—without a shooting. Homicides are down to levels not seen since the 1960s. and the street takeovers and follow-home robberies that drew repeated headlines in recent years have largely subsided.
The problem for Mayor Karen Bass’s re-election bid is that voters who are watching the mayoral contest may not be living inside those statistics.
Bass is facing challengers who are turning public safety into the central argument—homelessness. public drug use. and questions about how the Police Department has operated and been funded during her tenure. And in a race shaped by anger over what people see on sidewalks. the campaign trail has made “safety” less about what’s counted and more about what feels out of control.
Mike Bonin, a former L.A. City Council member. pointed to Spencer Pratt—an ex-reality TV star who has attacked Bass from the right—as evidence that Bass and other left-leaning candidates haven’t changed what Bonin called “prevailing narratives that the city is unsafe.” Pratt has gained traction by focusing his pitch on those day-to-day impressions.
Bonin’s view is echoed by Pratt’s approach to public messaging. On social media, Pratt has circulated artificial-intelligence videos made by fans depicting him as superheroes swooping in to rescue a city he portrays as a dystopian hellscape under Democratic rule.
In a March 26 post on Substack. Pratt railed against what he described as the thousands of drug-related calls emergency officials respond to every month. He said that if elected mayor. he would order the police and fire chiefs and the county health director to “treat every encampment as a grave-disability zone.” Pratt wrote. “No new laws needed. ” and added. “No endless task forces.”.
On the left side of the ballot. Nithya Raman—an elected City Council member who was once a political ally of Bass—argues that Bass has spent too much on the LAPD. Raman says police officer raises have come at the expense of basic services such as park maintenance and street paving. She has said the LAPD pay increases have “bankrupted” the city, depriving other services of funding.
In campaign ads, Raman positions herself as a more practical alternative to Bass. She has said she would work to reduce traffic deaths and prioritize safety on the city’s buses and trains.
Raman’s record, though, has become part of the friction. When she ran for office in 2020. she called for defunding the police and said the Los Angeles Police Department should be a “much smaller. specialized armed force.” Since then. she has voted for some budgets that increased spending on law enforcement. When pressed by The Times, Raman said she would work to overhaul public safety.
“I’ll propose budgets that expand unarmed response, work with LAPD to improve 911 response to more quickly answer calls for help that don’t require armed officers, and will appoint leadership at the Police Commission who will actively partner with the City Council to work on reform,” Raman said.
Representatives for Pratt and Bass did not respond to requests for interviews.
Bonin also said Bass—who supported various police reform measures while Congress—has shocked some of her supporters with how “aggressively pro-police she has been.” That shift is central to the critique.
When Bass ran for mayor in 2022, she vowed to retool recruitment and hiring to restore LAPD staffing to 9,500 officers. That goal has not been met. The number of sworn officers recently fell below 8. 600. even as Bass struck a deal with the police union offering higher starting salaries and new retention bonuses.
On Thursday, the City Council approved a $15-billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year. That spending plan includes funds to hire 510 new officers—just enough to offset turnover and maintain current staffing levels.
Raman has argued the LAPD should not shrink further, saying there aren’t enough officers to respond to 911 calls “in a timely fashion.”
Still, the debate over public safety is not just about staffing. It’s also about what the city’s most visible problems mean for voters.
Samantha Stevens. a Los Angeles political consultant and former legislative staffer. said people appear willing to support Pratt because he acknowledges that their sense of safety has been shaken—even though he has offered few concrete details beyond cracking down on homelessness. Stevens said Pratt’s critics worry that his plan depends on funneling homeless people into a shelter system that doesn’t have the capacity to handle them all. Others have noted that the aggressive tactics Pratt has proposed could face legal challenges.
“He’s kind of a case study in somebody who has a lot of opinions but has no idea of how the city is run,” Stevens said.
Fernando Guerra. a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University. argued that Pratt has tapped into a reservoir of frustration among Angelenos who believe crime and homelessness have spiraled out of control. Guerra said Bass faces a particular challenge because even if the numbers show crime has decreased. many people interpret what they see—encampments spreading onto public sidewalks—as evidence of a “breakdown” that means the city is becoming less safe.
“You want to go back to the days of Daryl Gates. you’ve got Pratt. ” Guerra said. referencing the former LAPD chief whose controversial police sweeps in the late 1980s produced thousands of arrests while alienating large segments of South L.A. Guerra added. “If you want more of the same from the past 20 years. you’ve got Bass. ” and “And if you want something new. then you’ve got Raman. but she has to explain what exactly she wants to do.”.
Pratt and Raman are widely seen as the strongest challengers, but several long-shot candidates have also focused on public safety. Some have attacked Bass for her support of LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell. Bass hired McDonnell in 2024. His tenure has been marked by what he has touted as an impressive drop in crime. but he has also faced criticism. including an uptick in shootings by police and aggressive crowd control tactics during protests against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Rae Huang—described as a minister and a housing rights advocate—said she would replace McDonnell immediately if elected mayor. calling for someone with the “ability to really reimagine what public safety really looks like.” Huang told The Times during a recent campaign stop at a bookstore in the West Adams neighborhood. “I’m the only one with the guts to say that out loud.”.
Huang has repeatedly referred to the LAPD as “one of the biggest legal gangs in the world” in interviews and on social media. She said she would divert money from the police budget to scale up programs that have shown promise sending unarmed specialists to deal with emergencies involving people experiencing mental health crises. She said the city already runs two pilot programs, but that under Bass they have remained underfunded. Last week, the City Council signed off on expanding one of the programs.
Huang also said she would invest more heavily in addressing the city’s lack of affordable housing, calling it an underlying cause of crime and homelessness.
The Police Protective League has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into attack ads against Huang and Raman.
Adam Miller. a tech entrepreneur. has tried to balance his campaign by advocating for changes while acknowledging that many residents still feel unsafe despite the historic drop in violent crime. He criticized a City Council vote to limit so-called pretextual stops—traffic stops in which officers pull people over for minor traffic infractions to investigate more serious offenses. a practice blamed for enabling racial discrimination.
Miller said that “constraining the Police Department is the opposite of what we should be doing.” He called for “leveraging” AI and modernizing the department’s “archaic computer systems,” which he said could help the LAPD catch up to other agencies that have adopted new technology.
Miller told The Times that he went on a ride-along with officers from the Rampart Division and said it was eye-opening. “At the highest level I think Angelenos don’t feel safe anymore,” Miller said. “They don’t feel safe in their neighborhoods. but more recently they don’t feel safe even in their own homes.”.
Miller said that even if the city is statistically safer than it’s been in decades, that may not be what voters are measuring. “I don’t think it’s just perception,” he said. “I think it’s reality that crime has spread.”
Los Angeles mayoral race Karen Bass Spencer Pratt Nithya Raman LAPD public safety homelessness drug use crime decline police staffing