Issues continue to rise at the Oceanwide Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, including one social media daredevil who snuck in and filmed himself performing a stunt at the buildings.
Earlier this month, Ben Schneider, who goes by Reckless Ben on YouTube, posted a video of him walking on a tightrope across the two towers. He told KNX news’ Jon Baird it was not hard to get inside the building.
“Well, most of the police officers are just on their phones so you can just hop the fence pretty easily,” he said. “But yeah, the first time we brought a ladder and then the police stole our ladder, so we're like,’ oh, actually you can just make a ladder out of humans pretty easily.’ And so you can just like have someone stand next to the fence and you literally just climb like another human like a ladder and it's a free way to get in.”
He said he got around security after his friends posed as a religious cult and held up signs that read “Jesus saves” to block security’s view.
He added that he saw the building as a canvas.
“I just want to use it as my canvas and I still have my art piece up there today,” he said. “It's the slackline is set up between. You can still see it, and I don't recommend anyone go up and try it. But, if you're super daring then maybe you can, but don't sue me if you fall and die because you're probably gonna fall and die if you do it. So don't do it.”
The video has since been taken down from Schneider’s YouTube channel.
It's not the only recent incident to take place. On Sunday an LAPD officer who was working near the building had her patrol car stolen. At 3:30 a.m., a man approached her and then got into her patrol vehicle, according to the LAPD.
At one point, the officer was ejected from the car. The suspect went north on Figueroa St. before getting into a crash at Eighth and Figueroa streets. The suspect continued to drive before stopping at Seventh St. He tried to run away but was arrested.
The officer was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Construction on the building, which is across from Crypto.com Arena, started five years ago; however, it stopped when the project ran out of money. Since then, the building has become a target for taggers and base jumpers.
Despite there being a tall fence around the building, a woman who works near the building told KNX News Jon Baird she’s seen people try to go inside.
“They try and come in here every single day ,” she said. “They don't care. They don't care because the police can't do anything about it. They arrest them and then they call the people who own the property.”
One man said you can see the graffiti growing.
“I know they have police here but it's still becoming the international symbol of an abandoned building in a metro area,” he said.
In February, L.A. City Council passed a motion declaring that the towers had to be cleaned up.
Then-LAPD Chief Michel Moore wrote on X there would be officers would “remain at the site as the City mobilizes resources to remove the graffiti and fortify the location.”
City News Service contributed to this report.
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