Crime

By David T. Vahedi

Crime is an issue affecting everyone and is a top priority of mine to hire more police and ensure we get our fair share of resources in the district.

"As I walked the neighborhoods, the thing I heard most was how residents were living in fear of being assaulted, having their homes and cars broken into and having to wait as long as 40 minutes for a police car to respond to a 911 call," Vahedi said. "While the rest of Los Angeles gained 360 police officers, the Westside lost 55 officers."

"With over 6,000 robberies and burglaries the last four years, the 5th district has slid from the safest district to tied for third among all Council districts," Vahedi added.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, residential burglary in the 5th district rose a whopping 39 percent, while the overall city rate declined by six percent. On most nights, there are only three patrol cars available to cover 68 square miles, West Los Angeles being the largest division in the city.

"It's stunning to me how we are not only shortchanging district residents by having them pay more in taxes and fees than they receive in city services, but also putting our police officers at risk by not putting enough officers and patrol cars on the street so they can back each other up on calls," Vahedi added. "We should have gotten at least 20 of those 360 officers that were hired."

As part of his crime-fighting platform, Vahedi proposed:

§ Work closer with the Mayor's office and LAPD to reallocate at least 20 additional officers and 10 patrol cars back to the Westside and southern portion of the San Fernando Valley; § As a former auditor, comb through the city budget for waste and areas needing efficiency improvements to deliver additional police officers; § Support a quarter-cent sales tax increase to fund additional police officers with revenue from car sales exempted to prevent losing sales to neighboring cities; § Support efforts by local merchants to bring in more foot patrols by police officers.

"This is an issue of life or death and it deserves a Councilman who will fight for residents and not spend time grandstanding and not delivering," Vahedi said. "This district deserves more. Our residents deserve more."