Last week, Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia said he'd audited homelessness deaths in L.A. for all of 2023 and claimed the list of 900 deaths was nearly a quarter fewer than the previous year.
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, who is in charge of releasing homeless mortality reports, said that data used for the audit was incomplete, and Mejia knew it.
Controller Mejia has since withdrawn the report, but only after the misleading information was made available to the public.
In it, the controller claimed that about 30% of the 900 deaths came from council member Kevin de Leon's district.
de Leon tells KNX News' Craig Fiegener that Controller Mejia was out to chase headlines.
"For example, in the district that I represent CD 14, we had 91 deaths in one particular location, which happens to be a county general hospital. That information has to be desegregated," de Leon said.
de Leon said the controller's report lacked vital context and believes its release politizes a sensitive matter, which "does a grave injustice to the people of the city of L.A."
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office indicates that its official report on this subject will not be complete until mid-May.
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