“Not Safe to Open a Business”: LA Struggling to Deal with Massive Crime Wave

In the eyes of some longtime Los Angelenos, the city is “finished” thanks to the rampant crime that has enveloped the city in recent years, with massive homeless encampments, viral videos of retail shops being looted, and frequent car robberies turning the once beautiful city into a seedy den of criminality. The city government, the instigator of some of the city’s bigger problems through its soft-on-crime policies, is struggling to deal with that crime situation.

The latest city attempt to deal with rampant criminality without doing what many on the right argue must be done, which is to crack down without remorse on the criminals, is the creation of a regional, multi-agency Organized Retail Crimes Task Force.

Mayor Karen Bass announced that new task force along law enforcement leaders from the area, saying, “What we’ve seen over just the past week in the city of Los Angeles and in the cities and area surrounding us is unacceptable.”

Continuing, the mayor admitted that the city’s residents currently feel unsafe when going shopping and insecure in their possessions if they open a business, but that the new task force aims to combat that.  “No Angeleno should feel like it is not safe to go shopping in Los Angeles. No entrepreneur should feel like it’s not safe to open a business in Los Angeles,” Mayor Bass said.

Emphasizing that point, Mayor Bass then said, “Our number one job is to keep Angelenos safe and to feel safe. When incidents of brazen theft and robbery occur, it shatters that feeling of safety.” The crime-ridden city’s residents, the frequent victims of such lootings and robbing, would likely disagree with the mayor that keeping them safe has been the city’s priority, though that could change.

The task force will be centered in the San Fernando Valley, the area in which Los Angeles sits, and will be spearheaded by the Los Angeles Police Department. Other police departments and sheriff’s offices will be working with it too. Those include police departments from Burbank, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, the U.S. Marshall’s Office, and the FBI. Those departments will partner with prosecutors from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, the Los Angels City Attorney’s Office, and the California Attorney General’s Office.