punished

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

It was a move this week that drew immediate blowback: Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson pulled Councilmember Nithya Raman off of her position as chair of the city’s housing and homelessness committee, just as Raman enters the homestretch in her campaign to unseat Mayor Karen Bass.

Raman quickly suggested that she was being punished for challenging Bass, a Harris-Dawson ally. On a video titled “Bass’ Ally Removed Me as Chair,” she portrayed the move as retribution for saying City Controller Kenneth Mejia should audit the mayor’s homeless programs.

“Mayor Bass and her allies are protecting what we all know is a deeply broken status quo, one that is not serving any person here in the city of Los Angeles,” she said.

For months, many at City Hall had expected Raman to make a stink if she was yanked from her post, transforming herself into a martyr. So what exactly was Harris-Dawson thinking?

In an interview Friday, Harris-Dawson said the removal of Raman as committee chair was simply one piece in a larger effort to make the council’s committees work better — and not punishment at all.

“If I were trying to punish her, I would have moved her off [her post] the day after she filed to run for mayor” back in February, he said.

Harris-Dawson said he split Raman’s committee into two — one focused on housing, the other on homelessness — because the two subjects were simply too big for a single committee to handle effectively. He said he and Raman had talked extensively about that idea, disagreeing on whether the two topics should have been combined.

The homelessness committee needs someone who can focus their undivided attention on the ongoing crises surrounding homeless services — including the Trump administration’s effort to strip hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, Harris-Dawson said.

“We’ve got to be able to move, and move in the most efficient manner possible,” he said.

Councilmember Nithya Raman attends a city council meeting at City Hall in downtown Los Angeles on August 14, 2026.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

As part of the reshuffling, Harris-Dawson picked Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Skid Row, to lead the now renamed homelessness and health committee. Jurado will also sit on the new three-member housing committee, which will be chaired by Councilmember Imelda Padilla.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, fresh off his reelection victory, will head up the council’s economic development committee, replacing Councilmember Curren Price, who leaves at the end of the year.

Even Councilmember Monica Rodriguez landed a spot in charge of the committee that deals with parks, a pet issue of hers. Harris-Dawson stripped Rodriguez of her committee seats last year, after she criticized his leadership.

The new assignments could give Harris-Dawson a base of support the next time there’s a vote on his presidency. Harris-Dawson dismissed the idea that there was any connection, calling such speculation “completely inaccurate.”

The committee assignments take effect next month.

Raman will continue serving on the five-member homelessness committee, just not as its chair. She will head the council committee dealing with immigration and civil rights. She even broadened her portfolio in some ways, securing a seat on the public safety committee, which deals with police and fire responses.

“If you’re on a committee, you definitely can get things done, and you don’t have to be the chair,” Harris-Dawson said.

Raman offered a different take, telling reporters on Friday that a committee chair simply has more authority, setting the agenda.

“You also have some more power in trying to get the departments to reply — although even my best efforts to get the departments to reply to report-backs didn’t work,” she said.

Not happy with the homeless count

The hot potato that is homelessness now heads to Jurado, at a critical time for the city and her district.

Jurado’s district, which takes in downtown and parts of the Eastside, saw a 23% increase in unsheltered homelessness, according to this year’s homeless count. On top of that, The Times recently reported that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which runs the count, failed to tally hundreds of residents at a Skid Row shelter in 2024 and 2025, skewing this year’s citywide numbers.

Jurado voiced frustration over those issues, saying city officials shouldn’t have to spend time and money verifying data that “should have been accurate from the start.”

She isn’t the only one voicing displeasure.

Harris-Dawson questioned the accuracy of the count in his own South L.A. district, where LAHSA reported a 127% increase in unsheltered homelessness.

Harris-Dawson thinks the big increase may stem from a single census tract south of Manchester Avenue between Normandie and Van Ness avenues. In that area, LAHSA said it found 277 unsheltered homeless people.

Last year, the agency counted 19, Harris-Dawson said.

“A jump of this magnitude in a single corridor strongly suggests a data collection or processing error rather than an actual change on the ground,” according to a motion signed this week by Harris-Dawson that calls for an explanation.

LAHSA officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Sherman Oaks Smackdown, Part II

It was the most personal of the mayoral debates staged last spring: Bass and Raman going mano a mano in front of an audience at the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

During that 90-minute back-and-forth, the two took shots at each other over homelessness, police hiring and their respective leadership styles, among other things.

Now, with the Nov. 3 runoff approaching, Bass and Raman are set for a Valley rematch on Wednesday, which will again feature Fox11’s Phil Shuman, as well as a panel of representatives from Sherman Oaks community groups.

Reservations have been filling up for in-person attendance. The event will also be live streamed on www.soha914.com and aired on LAist 89.3, organizers said.

State of play

— HITTING HUD: In a scathing order, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from taking control of federal funding for homelessness programs across L.A. County. In his preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said the Department of Housing and Urban Development acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it suspended LAHSA from managing federal funds.

— LOATHING LAHSA: Federal officials also denounced LAHSA as corrupt and incompetent during an appearance at the Dream Center, a faith-based residential treatment center. LAHSA pushed back, saying the federal government has failed to provide evidence of graft or abuse.

— RETURN ENGAGEMENT: The mayor’s Inside Safe homelessness program is spending more and more time going back to the same locations. Data reviewed by The Times showed that, in the fourth quarter of 2025, four out of every five Inside Safe operations were carried out in places already visited by its outreach teams. The repopulation problem has been especially pronounced along the 110 Freeway in South L.A.

— WAREHOUSE WOES: City leaders have accused Lineage, whose warehouse in Boyle Heights was destroyed by fire, of blowing past the city’s 45-day deadline for removing millions of pounds of rotting food from its property. Lineage reported Friday that the task was 94% done. Bass wants the city’s lawyers to take Lineage to court and impose penalties.

— RISKY BUSINESS: A divided City Council finalized an agreement aimed at controlling the city’s costs during the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, amid complaints that the event poses a major financial risk.

— TRAIN IN VAIN: Despite months of test runs, the Automated People Mover train is facing new uncertainty, with a bond rating downgrade and a legal battle between the city and the contractor.

— ZEROING IN: City Controller Kenneth Mejia told The Times he’s planning to use his auditing authority to examine spending by LA28, the privately run committee that is staging the Games.

— BUMMER NUMBERS: Euthanasia rates for cats and kittens are up in a big way in L.A. this year, according to the city’s latest stats.

— LICENSE TO CARRY: The federal government and the county’s Sheriff’s Department have reached a settlement over what prosecutors alleged was a pattern of delaying applications for permits to carry concealed firearms. The Sheriff’s Department has cut its waiting times and now complies with statutory deadlines, officials said.

— END OF THE PARTY: A mansion in Encino, located in the western end of Raman’s district, has become a massive party house, drawing a neighborhood outcry.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homeless program went to the area around Bessemer Street and Cedros Avenue in Van Nuys, an area represented by Padilla.
• On the docket next week: As we mentioned earlier, Bass and Raman go head to head in Sherman Oaks on Wednesday. Tune in!

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Over the past decade, the LAPD has received thousands of complaints accusing officers of targeting people solely because of their race, ethnicity or other form of outward appearance.

Only one has been fired for it.

The now-former officer, Edgar Garcia Cancino, was part of a San Fernando Valley anti-gang unit whose members were alleged to have improperly pulled over and searched hundreds of motorists. Cancino has appealed his termination, arguing that other officers in his unit carried out more of the problematic stops. He claimed the department sought to make an example of him because he refused to implicate his superiors in wrongdoing.

Accusations of racial profiling have long plagued the department, alienating generations of Black and brown Angelenos. Known within the LAPD as “biased policing,” such complaints have persisted despite repeated attempts to enact reform. But the question of how commonly profiling occurs in the LAPD remains a topic of pointed debate.

Years of studies by researchers and reporting by The Times and other news outlets have found Blacks and Latinos in L.A. are subjected to stops, frisks, searches and arrests at significantly higher rates than whites, regardless of whether they live in high-crime neighborhoods. Past LAPD chiefs have acknowledged isolated cases of profiling may occur. At the same time, they have denied that there is a widespread, systemic problem.

An internal LAPD investigation of Cancino’s Mission Division gang squad uncovered an “overwhelming pattern of intentional policy violations,” according to a summary of the case file reviewed by The Times.

Police investigators said in the case file that they identified hundreds of stops that were not properly documented, along with failures by the officers to active their body and dashboard cameras.

The allegations against Cancino largely hinged on two stops, according to his attorney. In May 2023, Cancino and his partner pulled over a man for allegedly speeding and having tinted windows, said his attorney, Nicole Castronovo. The vehicle’s registration turned out to be expired, Castronovo said, but the driver was allowed to leave without a citation after the officers searched his vehicle and found nothing incriminating.

When interviewed about the incident later, according to Castronovo, the motorist told police investigators that Cancino had stopped him because ”I looked like a G,” or gangster.

A few months later, the attorney said, Cancino was involved in another questionable stop, this time of a pedestrian who also later lodged a complaint alleging he was profiled.

Castronovo denied that Cancino had unfairly targeted anyone while on the job, saying he is a proud Latino who joined the force out of a desire to give back to the city where he grew up. She argued that the department’s investigators cherry-picked cases involving Cancino while ignoring similar behavior by other Mission cops.

“They have set up a system where it’s virtually impossible to sustain a biased policing complaint against an officer,” she said. “And then they turn around and weaponized” it against Cancino.

The probe’s findings were presented to LAPD leadership, who recommended that Cancino be fired and sent to a disciplinary hearing.

Castronovo argued in an appeal that her client and another fired Mission officer, Kim Lobos, had been denied a fair disciplinary hearing because both were initially represented by a lawyer appointed by the police union who had a conflict of interest. According to Castronovo, the union attorney also represented other Mission officers who agreed to testify against Cancino and Lobos. A Los Angeles County judge ultimately rejected their appeal.

Only one other LAPD officer prior to Cancino was fired for alleged racial profiling, a case that occurred in 2011.

According to the California Department of Justice, 4,878 allegations of bias were brought against LAPD officers from 2016 to 2025. Of those, only three were sustained.

The department’s rates mirror those of most other law enforcement agencies across the state. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which received roughly 10% fewer complaints over than span, has sustained six racial bias allegations against deputies.

Defenders of the Police Department note that any member of the public is allowed to submit a complaint regardless of whether there is supporting evidence, which leads to a high number of allegations that cannot be proven. Others note that the presence of body-worn cameras has helped disprove frivolous claims filed by criminal suspects or others who have an ax to grind with the department.

A report released last year by the advocacy group Catalyst California found that in 2025, Black motorists accounted for nearly a third of all stops for minor traffic violations, even though they make up roughly 8% of the city’s population. The same report found that Latinos, who are about 47% of L.A.’s population, were pulled over in 58% of all traffic stops.

Latino people are up to four times more likely to be subjected to “consent” searches, and Black people up to three times as likely, according to the Catalyst study. Fewer than 1 in 10 of those stops resulted in seizures of guns or drugs, the report said.

LAPD officials have pushed back on the findings, saying there is no established methodology for analyzing racial profiling data. Many factors affect the racial and ethnic patterns of traffic stops — from the predominant race of the neighborhood in which the stop was made or whether the stop resulted in an arrest and conviction — all of which must be considered when interpreting raw data, officials say.

In May, the Los Angeles City Council voted in favor of limiting the use of “pretextual” stops, in which police use a broken taillight or another minor equipment violation as justification to pull someone over in order to investigate whether a more serious crime has occurred. Activists and some council members said they wanted to ban a controversial tactic that enabled racial discrimination. The measure urges the Police Commission, which is responsible for LAPD policy changes, to take up the issue this year.

The LAPD’s unwillingness to acknowledge officer biases and hand down punishment when warranted serves only to drive a wedge between the community and the department, said Peter Bibring, a civil rights and police practices attorney.

“The department, year after year after year, is saying, ‘Nope this never happens, this never happens,’” Bibring said. “Then the community doesn’t feel like the department is recognizing these legitimate problems and responding to their concerns.”

During a deposition for a racial profiling lawsuit filed over a 2019 traffic stop, an LAPD official was asked what evidence it would take to get someone fired.

The attorney for the plaintiff, a Black man who sued claiming he was pulled over by three gang officers who handcuffed him and allegedly searched his vehicle without probable cause, asked: “If you found out that a given officer had pulled over 2,000 people in the last year, and all 2,000 of them were Black, would you have enough information, sitting here today, to determine whether or not that data alone indicated that the officer was engaged in biased policing?”

The LAPD official’s response, according to the deposition transcript: “No.”

Jim Willis, a former LAPD detective who later worked for the L.A. Police Commission’s inspector general’s office, pointed to past audits that found serious shortcomings in the department’s investigations of racial bias complaints. Furthermore, he said, many people who are affected never file claims because they don’t understand laws around consent searches — or they are just relieved when officers let them go.

Even when someone bothers to file a complaint, Willis said, it’s difficult to gather enough evidence from a brief interaction to prove an officer made a traffic stop solely because of race. If there was a minor traffic infraction or other probable cause to make a stop, proving their motive requires them to confess to acting with intent to discriminate, Willis said.

That’s why most claims are dismissed by LAPD investigators, he said, “unless, you caught somebody on their body-worn video saying, ‘Hey tonight we’re going out and we’re (pulling over) brothers.’”