Accountability or Obstruction? The Risk of Politicizing LAPD Oversight

There is an old saying that you do not put the fox in charge of the henhouse. In Los Angeles, we seem determined to ignore that wisdom. Last week, the City Council took up a proposal to strip the LAPD of auditing and accounting functions and hand them over to a new bureau under City Controller Kenneth Mejia. On the surface, it sounds like routine government reorganization. Look a little closer, and it is anything but.

Let’s be honest about who is pushing this and why. The motion was introduced by Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez and seconded by Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez. Both are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and have long been vocal supporters of defunding the police. This is not a secret or a smear. It is their stated political position. The question Angelenos should be asking is why we would ever hand financial oversight of the LAPD to people whose stated goal is to shrink the LAPD out of existence.

And then there is Kenneth Mejia himself. The City Controller has been one of the most prominent “defund the police” advocates in Los Angeles. He has used his social media platforms not just to criticize the department, but at times to actively coach residents on how to sue the LAPD. That is his prerogative as a private citizen, but it is deeply relevant context when we are talking about giving his office direct authority over police department finances and accounting. Oversight requires a degree of good faith. It demands that the overseer actually wants the institution to succeed. There is no reasonable argument that any of the people engineering this proposal meet that standard when it comes to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The proposal itself calls for transferring roughly ten LAPD accounting and performance positions into a new so-called Bureau of Police Oversight within the Controller’s Office. Proponents frame this as a matter of accountability and good government. But anyone paying attention to how city government actually operates knows that these kinds of transfers rarely go smoothly, and they almost never benefit the public.

We have a recent and instructive example right in front of us. LAPD hiring was moved from the city’s Personnel Department to the city’s Personnel Department rather than being managed internally. The result? New applicants are now waiting up to a year to move through the process. A full year. While communities across Los Angeles beg for more officers on the streets, bureaucratic reorganization has turned recruiting into a waiting game. The people who made that decision did not face any consequences. The neighborhoods that need police do.

This new proposal carries the same risks, but the stakes are higher. Auditing, accounting, and financial performance functions are not abstract back-office tasks. They directly affect how quickly departments can purchase equipment, how efficiently officers are deployed, and how well the LAPD can account for its own operations. Pulling those functions out of the department and placing them under a hostile political actor is not oversight. It is sabotage dressed up in procedural language.

I want to be clear: real accountability for the LAPD matters. The department should be transparent. It should be subject to rigorous auditing. Those are things I support without reservation. But there is a meaningful difference between accountability and obstruction. There is a meaningful difference between independent oversight and handing the tools of financial control to someone who wants to use them to kneecap an institution.

The Valley, like every community in Los Angeles, deserves a police department that is fully staffed, properly equipped, and able to respond when people call for help. We are already fighting to get our fair share of public safety resources. We are already dealing with the consequences of slow hiring and outdated equipment. The last thing this city needs is another layer of politicized bureaucracy designed to make it harder for the LAPD to function.

The families who live here are not asking for a political debate. They are asking to feel safe when they walk to their cars at night. They are asking for an officer who shows up when something goes wrong. Those are not complicated requests. They are the bare minimum, and right now, Los Angeles is struggling to meet them.

This proposal should be rejected. Not because accountability is wrong, but because this particular arrangement is built on bad faith. When the people designing the oversight structure have spent years working to defund the institution they will oversee, that is not a conflict of interest. It is a fundamental failure of governance. Los Angeles cannot afford it.

Tim Gaspar is a candidate for Los Angeles City Council, District 3, representing the West Valley. Learn more at timgaspar.com.