L.A. Mayor Frontrunner, Leftist Karen Bass, Calls for More Cops

Breitbart News reports that Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), the current frontrunner to succeed outgoing Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, proposed expanding the size of the LAPD on Tuesday as the city continues to suffer a crime wave.

The LAPD lost personnel as Garcetti announced in June 2020, with the city under curfew during the Black Lives Matter riots, that he would cut up to $150 million from the LAPD budget for redistribution to “communities of color.” The city has since suffered from a surge in violent crime and several high-profile murders.

In the wake of increasing public outrage, the radical Bass has now issued a “Strategy for Public Safety” that includes a plan to move 250 LAPD officers from desk jobs to patrols, and to hire hundreds of new LAPD personnel.

“Whether you’ve had your car broken into, your backpack stolen, your property damaged – or you’ve seen news coverage of home robberies, or violent assaults – more and more Angelenos I speak with tell me crime has touched them personally, and they feel scared. That’s not right. All Angelenos deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods,” she wrote in a letter accompanying her plan.

But Bass’s plan also includes predictable left-wing criminal justice “reforms,” such as using “mental health, homeless outreach and other specialists who can respond to people in distress” rather than police to respond to some types of emergency calls. It also supports steps such as ending cash bail, “but local justice officials must properly implement the policy by taking public safety into consideration.”

As they have proven over the last few years of calls for defunding the police, supporting rioters and looters, demonizing law enforcement, and pushing for open borders, Democrats never take public safety into consideration unless it serves their agenda to appear that they do.