The distinctive sound of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles wasn’t the roar of the crowds that packed the LA Memorial Coliseum. It was the chop-chop noise of helicopter rotor blades churning high above the City of Angels.
Hundreds of eyes in the sky to make sure the criminals below were kept out of sight – either in jail or in their homes. Even the National Guard was sent in to help keep watch – and keep Los Angeles’ life of crime tucked far away from the international spotlight.
Olympic organizer Peter Ueberroth graced the cover of Time magazine as Man of the Year – and then became the commissioner of Major League Baseball. Then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and LAPD Chief Daryl Gates emerged as Olympic heroes just shy of a position on the medal podium. Los Angeles netted more than $200 million in profit. More than 70,000 jobs had been created – and then almost as soon as the Olympic flame was extinguished from the LA Memorial Coliseum – they disappeared.
It was nothing more than the first floor of a house of cards that would burst into flames when the Rodney King verdict lit the fuse of years of frustration, unemployment, and iron fist policing. That can’t happen again.
In four short years, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will be welcoming the world to Los Angeles once again as the host of the 2028 Summer Olympic Games. But Los Angeles isn’t ready for primetime – because Mayor Bass and the LA City Council have no idea how to keep Los Angeles safe.
And a few international junkets to Paris isn’t going to change that because Mayor Bass and the City Council refuse to listen to the leaders of the LAPD which was once one of America’s premier law enforcement agencies, but rank-and-file staffing has dwindled to just 8,802 officers because qualified candidates refuse to work in a hostile environment.
Planners for the Los Angeles Olympics are relying on offloading $2 billion in security costs to the federal government to keep Olympic athletes and tourists safe during the 2028 games. That’s not enough.
Crime on the Los Angeles METRO public transit spiked 65% in the first few months of 2024. Passengers were stabbed and shot to death with almost the same regularity as the scheduled stops for METRO’s buses and trains. Drivers were assaulted. And the riders who remained because many of them have no other transportation options armed themselves – preparing for what seems like the inevitable.
The METRO system is what Bass is insisting will transport fans to venues throughout the Southland – because the 2028 Olympics will be car-free. The California National Guard is too busy policing Oakland in a desperate attempt by California Governor Gavin Newsom to keep law and order in a city that has been decimated by soft on crime policies to help rescue Los Angeles from the consequences of its own actions.
Angelenos, and as a result, the rest of Southern California, have been subjected to smash and grab robberies, home invasions, and general lawlessness as the City’s tough on crime approach during the 1984 Olympics has morphed over the last 40 years into a lack of accountability – and an elected District Attorney in George Gascon who refuses to enforce the law against those who break it.
Of all California’s regions, Los Angeles residents are the most likely to be very concerned about being the victim of a crime while residents in the Orange County/San Diego region are the least likely to worry, according to a February 2024 study by the Public Policy Institute of California.
Los Angeles is one of the major cities struggling to recruit and hire new officers, as staffing levels hit their lowest mark in more than two decades. LAPD Interim Police Chief Dominic Choi reported that while emergency calls like crimes in progress have not been affected, non-emergency response times have grown – for now.
While cities across California, including San Francisco under the leadership of progressive Mayor London Breed, are taking action to clear out homeless encampments as a result of the Supreme Court ruling on Grant’s Pass along with Governor Newsom’s executive order to give cities the power to handle their own encampments, Mayor Bass has doubled down on her refusal to address the homelessness encampments that have plagued her city – and resulted in catastrophic fires that resulted in the serious injury of a Los Angeles firefighter and the crippling of one of America’s most congested freeways. Meanwhile, the homeless encampments in Los Angeles continue to flourish while its vibrant neighborhoods continue to suffer at the hands of criminals.
Mayor Karen Bass should be worrying about making Los Angeles safe for the Olympics. But most importantly, she must start worrying about making it safe for the millions of hardworking people who live there – and who will still live there when the international spotlight on the Olympics fades away. And right now, not even the Olympic rings are safe from being stolen by criminals in Los Angeles.
Todd Spitzer is district attorney of Orange County.
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