Community safety partnership for MacArthur Park in Los Angeles?

Some time ago, I learned about how the LA Police Department in association with the Housing Authority, created what they called a community safety partnership, to put officers full time in high crime housing projects.  The program has been quite successful ("After Years Of Violence, L.A.'s Watts Sees Crime Subside," NPR and "What Does It Take to Stop Crips and Bloods From Killing Each Other," New York Times ).

I wrote a piece suggesting something similar for the Ballpark neighborhood of Salt Lake ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)," 2020).  I think it's a model that's quite portable.

Aaron preps a pipe for a hit of fentanyl in the Westlake District.(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 

Steve Lopez of the LA Times has been following the decline of MacArthur Park in LA ("Can MacArthur Park be saved? A look to the past points the way forward," "‘Why are you messing with me for smoking fentanyl?’ The tough task of policing MacArthur Park," "‘I can’t deal with life sober’: Response to the MacArthur Park drug epidemic just isn’t enough," and "The time for excuses is over. L.A.’s MacArthur Park needs a champion now") which is apparently a recurring problem.  

A homeless man, wrapped in a blanket, walks by two men prepping a pipe for a hit of fentanyl near an alley in Westlake known for drug use. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 

The park declines, is cleaned up, people don't maintain the same level of care, and the park declines again.  Not unlike the Kensington district in Philadelphia ("Business and bloodshed," Philadelphia Inquirer), the area has significant problems.  From the fourth article:

In MacArthur Park, it’s not as if the problems have been ignored, nor are they easy to fix. They’re deeply rooted in poverty, homelessness, the lack of affordable housing, a low-wage economy, cheap and powerfully destructive drugs and gang-controlled criminal enterprise. 

Recently, Bass and her team have been strategizing with the police, recreation and sanitation departments and working with supportive housing providers. 

On Thursday, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who believes too much money is spent on law enforcement and not enough on social services, held a news conference in MacArthur Park to announce several partnerships and social service initiatives. She also said she is committed — along with county Supervisor Hilda Solis and state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, among others — to improving “the quality of life for residents and visitors alike.” 

           ("What are the answers to MacArthur Park crisis, and can Councilmember Hernandez lead the way?," LAT, "Can key politicians in Los Angeles help MacArthur Park? They’re going to try," LA Daily News). 

...The neighborhood is primarily made up of low-income Spanish-speaking people, many of them undocumented residents who can’t vote and can be easily ignored even though they’re a critical part of L.A.’s economy, present and future. So it’s good to finally see such a response in a neighborhood that has become a symbol of the disorder that is crippling Los Angeles, but it shouldn’t have taken this long to confront the festering crisis head-on. 

I wondered if this might be yet another of the many MacArthur Park rescue projects that brought temporary relief before falling apart. It’s not just neighborhood problems that have to be fixed. It’s the fractured relationships between various city and county agencies, the culture of over-promising and under-delivering, and the scourge of fragile egos and petty politics.

The need for police + social services = community safety partnership.  Lopez argues that without police involvement, change is unlikely, or at least unlikely to be long term.  I would say they just need to introduce and maintain a CSP.   Which is what Lopez describes in the first article.

Parks conservancies as more engaged parks managers.  Note that this is a problem for many urban parks across the nation ("Addressing Homelessness in Public Parks," NRPA).  NYC deals with it by having park  conservancies, basically park improvement districts, to provide the kind of more detailed attention to the public space that is beyond the capacity of a parks agency responsible for many parks.  Sometimes these are funded in part by a small property tax on commercial property in the area.

Not unlike libraries, many of which have created social work positions to address homeless related problems as people gather in libraries ("‘A lot of people in need’: Social workers added to staffs at Mass. libraries," 25News, "How One Library Is Filling the Gaps in Homeless Services," Governing), one of the only public spaces open to all, certain parks in many cities need the kind of focused attention common to many of New York City's parks.  (Salt Lake should do the same for some of its major urban parks also.)

Transit agencies have created similar programs to better address homeless issues ("Transit's Response to People Who Are Homeless," APTA, Homelessness: A Guide for Public Transportation, National Academies Press).

Engaging the community in positive activities is crucial.  FWIW, like the Sharkey point about the importance of community organizing as an element of the crime drop (Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence), I argue that parks are loci for civic engagement (""Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Eight | Civic Engagement," 2024), and wrt safety, that parks with problems need to be used by positive users--as Fred Kent of Project for Public Spaces used to say "if you plan for streets and traffic that's what you get, it you plan for people and places that's what you get instead."

Tons of activities need to be organized in problematic parks to help sweep the nuisance uses away.

Group walks, dog walks, park cleanups, organized playground activities, etc.

Engaging Hispanics.  The area is home to a large number of low income Hispanics, many undocumented.  They don't have a predilection to participate in community affairs, because many come from countries where activists are killed.  This has made it difficult to maintain a functioning community council--many of the seats go vacant ("Mired in overdose crisis, MacArthur Park struggles to revive Neighborhood Council," Los Angeles Daily News).

I don't think social urbanism--a Latin American strategy for community revitalization--is relevant because this community already has parks and libraries.  

One strategy is to build and or strengthen Latino-focused community organizations.  No question that extranormal organization and community building is required.

In the health field, in there is a program in nearby Orange County, called Latino Health Access, that could be a model for how to create a program to engage Latinos in community improvement programs.

Latino Health Access, Orange County, California.   Focused on providing health care to the Latino community, which has traditionally been underserved, the organization focuses on education, prevention and participation, training a cadre--many thousands over the years--of paraprofessionals and volunteers working in and already part of the community, to deliver health education, focused on chronic diseases, such as diabetes.

The organization was featured in a four-part HBO documentary “The Weight of the Nation,” on addressing obesity.

The organization sponsors an annual health walk, has built a park and community center in an impoverished neighborhood that lacked such facilities ("Residents Bring First-Ever Park to California’s 92701 Zip Code," Salud America!), and the organization's main clinic has a community room with space for exercise classes, fitness equipment, and space, a "Youth Room," for adolescents.

LHA has published a workbook, Recruiting the Heart, Training the Brain: The Work of Latino Health Access, discussing what they do, how they built the organization, and their care model.