Stop Funding the LAPD
TRANSMISSION 20: A response to Karen Bass' proposed budget increasing the LAPD's budget by $233 million
To Los Angeles City Council,
My name is Chris Kessler and I live in Highland Park. I’ve seen Karen Bass’ proposed budget and it is a slap in the face to every citizen who wants a safer, cleaner, more progressive Los Angeles. The idea that she would include increasing the LAPD’s budget by nearly a quarter of a billion dollars the year after the LAPD cost the city nearly an identical amount of money in liability payouts isn’t just poor accounting, it’s disgusting. Bass would rather have her people living in a crumbling police state than actually hold the LAPD to account for their lawless violence.
The LAPD’s budget should not increase one cent, and that money should be redistributed amongst other programs that would actually lower crime by providing a better quality of life for the people of Los Angeles. At a time when we are seeing how progressive politics are serving the people of New York City under the leadership of Zohran Mamdani, it is baffling to me that Karen Bass would instead continue down the path centrist, corporate Democrats across the country who continue to aid and abet the rightward shift that the United States is being pushed into.
As a resident of Highland Park, an historically latino community, I can attest to how the LAPD’s presence causes nothing but ill will and operates as an occupying force rather than a tool for community safety. At all times there are LAPD helicopters flying over head, performing circling maneuvers reminiscent of anti-terrorism raids in Iraq rather than community-based police work. No matter the crime, no matter the severity, the LAPD’s overblown budget causes them to approach all situations with maximum force so as to maintain a feeling of maximum subjugation in the citizenry. These tactics are, as usual, directed toward communities of color. According to the Controller’s Office, as led by true public servant Kenneth Mejia, “... Brown and Black people are arrested at a disproportionate rate, making up an average of 78.26% of all arrests over the past four years (2019-2022) despite being only 56% of the LA City population according to 2020 Census data.”
We see this in the day to day, as well as see it in the LAPD’s response to the extraordinary times we are living in. As Angelenos rise up to protest the fascist takeover of our country, the LAPD has been unleashed onto crowds of protestors, beating them, blinding them, and bloodying their freedoms. One such freedom is the freedom of the press, as the LAPD has consistently, illegally, assaulted and arrested reporters covering these events. Karen Bass has also rejected using the LAPD to hold racist, unjust, kidnapping ICE members to account for their actions. Instead of standing with the people of Los Angeles, the city has determined that the LAPD is a tool of the state, a bludgeon to be used to quell dissent rather than standing for and with the citizenry.
If our policing is racist, why would we increase the LAPD’s budget? If our policing is leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in liability payouts, why would we increase the LAPD’s budget? If our policing is a tool to suppress our rights, why would we increase the LAPD’s budget? If our city is crumbling and we must cut the very programs that are statistically shown to decrease crime, why would we increase the LAPD’s budget?
Council, you have a duty to look at this budget with clear eyes and logic, regardless of favor to any coercive force that may lean on you to protect the LAPD. This country has chose to walk down a dark path where militarized police with budgets that can never be decreased for fear of political blowback has destabilized the very safety the police are purported to help create.
Do the right thing—don’t give the LAPD a dime more. And, if you have any conviction of principle at all, go a step further and decrease their budget. At the very least, change it so liabilities come out of the LAPD’s budget, not the general fund.
Rise to the moment your city is faced with and you will be remembered as a body that turned the tide. Fail to and be remembered as collaborators who chose to act as a tool of class violence over increasing the wellbeing and livelihoods of their very citizens.
Thank you for your time,
Chris Kessler