Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell joined L.A.’s Morning News on Wednesday to discuss the recent raids in MacArthur Park, what’s going on with the Flock Safety cameras, and how security is shaping up for the 2028 Olympics.
The MacArthur Park raids
Chief McDonell said that while MacArthur Park has been “in a state of disarray for many, many years,” there’s a commitment to getting it cleaned up.
“The mayor is committed to giving the resources necessary to be able to deal with it,” he told L.A.’s Morning News’ Mike Simpson and Brian Ping. “Really, the leverage we have is working with our partners, federal, state, and local, focused on in a multi-tiered approach.”
That approach, McDonnell says, starts with the cartels and the Mexican mafia.
“So we were able to disrupt, substantially, some of the major distribution network that's involved in the park and elsewhere,” he explained. “Then we went to the mid-level dealers and took off a number of those folks and disrupted their traffic.”
The next phase, he says, will focus on dealing with addicts and “ people who are in the park who can't care for themselves, to be able to work.
“With social service providers, county health, mental health, and others to be able to find, housing for them and to be able to get them the treatment they need to be able to get off the street,” he said
Flock Safety cameras
The LAPD expired its contract with Flock Safety cameras due to “serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues, particularly around privacy and the data that is being collected from these cameras,” Chief Information Officer Dean Gialamas told KABC.
Chief McDonnell said that while the cameras are a “great piece of technology,” the department’s mandate is that “we decide what the criteria is and not let vendors dictate what our policy is going to be.”
“In this case, they have a great product, but by the time the deadline came and the memorandum of understanding was due to expire, we weren't in a position to feel comfortable with what they had proposed moving forward,” he said. “So it should have been no surprise to them. We were very, very clear in what our expectations were, and for us, you know, the whole crime investigation picture is critically important, but we have to balance that with the importance of civil liberties and maintaining people's constitutional rights, and that's where we ended up on this. So still, moving forward with the technology, but it has to be used appropriately.”
Security for the 2028 Olympics
With Los Angeles two years away from hosting the 2028 Olympics, Chief McDonnell said that because the Olympics is a national special security event, the Secret Service will be in charge of the security while the LAPD will “work in support of them in that endeavor.”
“The Olympics will see 200 potentially heads of state come in for that, and then the election will be following that with all that it's involved in the campaigning effort that they're involved in and then preparing for the election and the inauguration,” he said. “So they will be stretched thin as well. We're all in it together, and we'll be able to supplement each other's resources as best we can, but with them in it, we have access to federal assets that we would not have if it wasn't a national security event.”
Listen to the full interview with Chief McDonnell in the audio above.
Follow KNX News 1070 AM
