LOS ANGELES (KNX) – Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass sat down with KNX’s Craig Fiegener for an exclusive interview regarding her proposed budget, the Inside Safe initiative, and hiring more officers for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Working with City Council to address homelessness
Mayor Bass said she’s most proud of the relationships she’s built with the Los Angeles City Council members to help address the issue of the city’s homelessness.
“…We have worked together to identify encampments that they felt were the most problem obviously to the people who are on the street, but also to the neighbors and businesses and we've worked together to get those people off the street to get them housed,” she said. “And I'm happy to say that so far none of the encampments have become repopulated.”
$250 million for Inside Safe
On April 18, Mayor Bass revealed her first budget proposal, which included asking for another $250 million for her Inside Safe program.
“Well, I think what he wants more than anything is for more transparency and so what we will propose moving forward is that we do the reporting and that we do the reporting twice a month to the appropriate committee,” she said.
She added it is important that homelessness is viewed as a city-wide issue and that there needs to be collaboration to combat it.
“That's what I'm hoping that we'll be able to do moving forward, which is why we need to make sure that 250 million dollars is kept intact for Inside Safe,” she said.
Hiring more LAPD officers
In her budget proposal, Mayor Bass said she wants to recruit more officers for the Los Angeles Police Department and increase the number of officers to 9,500.
“Well, I definitely know that there are differences there and then there are people that feel that the goal of 9500 is too ambitious, but I just think it is real critical that we not have a police department with fewer than 9000 officers,” she said. “And I am very concerned that we're very close to that already and that doesn't even account for the attrition goals. So I didn't just pick the number out of the sky. I picked the number with the idea in mind that we will aggressively recruit officers and that's what we intend to do.”
Mayor Bass said she’s expecting to get back her edited budget around May 20th.
Listen to the full, unedited interview with Mayor Bass in the audio above.
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