Democrat on LA City Council bashes city for prioritizing free crack pipes over funding fire dept

https://nypost.com/2025/01/17/us-news/democrat-on-la-city-council-bashes-
handling-of-fire-funds/

A Democrat on the LA City Council is slamming “chronic under-investment” 
in basic services and fire prevention — even as Mayor Karen Bass has 
funneled money to providing drug addicts with free crack pipes.

The fury in LA Council member Traci Park’s voice was palpable as she raged 
against what she called years of poor financial decisions by LA city 
officials and how it’s come to a head with the catastrophic wildfires in 
her district, which includes hard-hit Pacific Palisades.

“It’s bananas,” Park told The Post. “The city of LA is in the middle of 
multiple crises: mental health, addiction, the homeless, infrastructure 
failures everywhere. We have pipes underground that are 100 years old and 
are just poised to cause an environmental catastrophe. Our sidewalks are 
cracked and falling apart all over.”

Park, 49, who was an attorney for 20 years before being elected to the 
council for District 11 in 2022, is a Democrat but hasn’t shied away from 
left-wing sacred-cow issues such as the vast and seemingly insurmountable 
homeless problem in her city.

“The fire department was decimated after the financial collapse of 2008 
and it’s never recovered,” she said. “There has been a chronic under-
investment in public safety here for years. It’s not just the fire 
department, it’s the police department as well. It’s not the fault of one 
mayor or one fiscal crisis. It’s chronic decades of underinvestment.

“We have the same number of firefighters and fire stations in LA in 2025 
that we did in 1960. How insane is that?”

Since 1960, Los Angeles’ population has more than doubled — from around 
6.2 million to more than 12.5 million today.

Activists angry over Park’s stance that homeless encampments should be 500 
feet from schools and homes tried to interrupt her swearing-in ceremony in 
2022. But the council member has been undeterred in calling out what she 
sees as wasteful spending in some areas and none in others.

“Last year, the LA Fire Department responded to over 500,000 emergency 
calls,” Park said. “Half of those calls were related to the homeless 
population.  We haven’t added new staffing or even any new 911 operators. 
On an average day in LA we are not staffed adequately to meet demands.

“We have gone so far away from core services,” she added. “We are spending 
a billion dollars a year for the homeless and what is it getting us? It 
gets us ‘harm reduction kits’  so we are basically handing out free crack 
pipes  enabling people to stay addicted and out on the streets rather than 
fixing our sidewalks and investing in our fire department.

“We are doing these free money giveaways and going down these crazy rabbit 
holes of supposed social service programs that have no real oversight or 
management and no effectiveness.”

So far, the fires have killed at least 25 people, singed more than 40,600 
acres and annihilated upward of 12,300 structures, among them countless 
homes, according to Cal Fire. 

The Palisades Fire, the most destructive of the blazes which wiped out 
much of the star-studded Palisades and Malibu last week, was 31% contained 
as of Friday, while the Eaton Fire burning outside Pasadena was 65% 
contained.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna has warned that the death toll 
could go up, considering that close to 30 people are still missing.

Park, whose team is working around the clock to tend to thousands of 
suffering residents who have lost their homes as well as to the gargantuan 
task of cleaning up and rebuilding, could not hide her frustration.

“I spoke at a fire commission meeting 21 days before the Palisades fires 
and said we have emergency response times that are double the national 
standard,” she said. “We don’t have enough fire stations. We have million 
dollar-fire vehicles sitting in a boneyard [because there aren’t enough 
mechanics to fix them.)”

“We have tens of millions of deferred basic maintenance at our fire 
stations. The roofs leak every time it rains. The HVAC system doesn’t 
work. We need special washing machines to get the poisons out of the 
firefighters’ turnout gear. They’re called PFAS extractors. They get the 
cancer-causing chemicals out of their turnout gear.  We don’t have the 
plugs in the walls to plug [the machines] in.”

But Park, who was a registered Republican years ago, refused to bash any 
top elected officials like Gov. Gavin Newsom or Mayor Bass. 

“I’m someone who is non-ideological. I don’t care if someone is a 
registered Democrat or registered Republican. My ask is the same. I need 
help. I have thousands of constituents who have lost everything and are 
suffering. Pointing fingers is not going to bring their homes back to life 
or rebuild them.

“But I’m not accepting any excuses. We need to turn this around.”

Conversation

BMD
10 hours ago

I’m so sick and tired of hearing about all of this in-your-face, blatant 
corruption, transpiring throughout every aspect of California, yet no one 
is EVER held accountable, responsible, or serving time behind bars where 
they obviously belong. SOMEONE NEEDS TO MAKE A SERIOUS, LEGAL MOVE in the 
interests of actual residents and legal citizens. You don’t need to be a 
rocket scientist to clearly see what is going on now for decades. It’s 
absolutely mind boggling.  

RationalMan
8 hours ago

This is what happens when gars are in control. No? LOOK at every major 
city where they are mayors and in the administrations. 

Jefferson said "they" would never adapt to decent society. And they never 
will.

Thurston Howell III
6 hours ago

All of this corruption in LA and they have a Gofund me that received 100 
million dollars and movie stars starting a fund raiser meanwhile we hear 
nothing about the people of western North Carolina those simple living 
white people are being ignored.

Cythedog
10 hours ago

The reason the homeless population is growing is the money being spent on 
them. Spend more money, get more homeless. $1.3 Billion would take care of 
a bunch of infrastructure problems. Drug addicted people should be detoxed 
once, a second appearance in the system should yield serious prison time. 
As long as the voting public installs far left democrats nothing gets 
fixed.  

Boran Bopha
4 hours ago

100% correct. For Dems, as sick as this is, growing the homeless 
population is considered a "win." If they "help" the 100k homeless people 
in their jurisdiction one year, then 200k the next, they literally cheer 
and congratulate themselves.


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