Captain Smith on what LAPD is Doing Downtown

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Don Garza has posted video of Captain Smith’s presentation at last night’s DLANC meeting. As always, Captain Smith had great things to say about what LAPD is doing Downtown. It’s a good watch, and I’m glad Don was there to film it.

A couple things stuck out to me:

First, since the Safer Cities initiative started Downtown in mid-October they’ve made 4100 arrests. Most of those are narcotics arrests, targeting the sellers, not the users. They’ve got lots of undercover work going on. Captain Smith said that just recently they made 13 arrests that seized 80 pounds of raw heroin.

The second thing might seem small, but I think it’s actually pretty important. LAPD has started making arrests on trash dumping in “Toy town” (to use Captain Smith’s words, which I like). It’s amazing how much garbage gets dumped on the streets in the wholesale sides of Downtown. That junk blows around, clutters the drains, and generally makes the neighborhood feel ugly. To have that stuff getting targeted is a great step forward.