Forty activists screamed "F**k the police" at a Los Angeles Police Commission meeting in January and forced it to a halt.
That was the warm-up.
Now the same radical faction that mobbed that meeting wants to seize control of the LAPD's $3 billion budget – and they just got the votes to do it.
The "Abolish the Police" Councilwoman Moves to Control the Money
Hernandez and her Democratic Socialist ally Hugo Soto-Martinez pushed through a measure creating a new "Bureau of Police Oversight" inside the City Controller's office – stripping the LAPD of its own auditors and accountants and handing that power to Controller Kenneth Mejia.
Mejia is no neutral watchdog.
He campaigned alongside Hernandez and Soto-Martinez, left the Democratic Party in 2024 over opposition to military spending, ran for Congress previously as a Green Party candidate, and has made no secret that he believes the LAPD takes too large a share of the city's budget.
The measure passed unanimously – without a single council member calling out what it actually was.
LAPD officers sat in the chamber watching the vote. The department declined to comment.
Cops Are Already Stretched to the Breaking Point
The timing could not be worse for Los Angeles.
The LAPD is already projected to hit its lowest officer count in 30 years – roughly 8,620 sworn officers. The department has bled 1,400 cops since 2019.
The city faces two massive security events on the horizon: the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics. Chief Jim McDonnell has warned the city is running on a "shoestring."
A federal court order has already stripped the department of its 40mm crowd-control launchers. When McDonnell appeared before the Police Commission in January to defend the department's position, the meeting had to be paused while activists were removed from the chamber.
The same week, City Councilman Soto-Martinez led the council in rebuking McDonnell for refusing to enforce Gavin Newsom's law banning federal agents from wearing masks – a law McDonnell called "not a good public policy decision."
This Is the Playbook and It Has Always Worked
The "defund" movement failed when it was honest about its goals.
This version is smarter.
Call it "transparency." Call it "oversight." Create a bureau with a neutral-sounding name inside an office run by a political ally. Strip away auditors who know the department from within and replace them with loyalists who report to someone who thinks the LAPD is too expensive to begin with.
Former Los Angeles Police Commissioner Maria "Lou" Calanche – who is now challenging Hernandez for her seat – saw through it immediately. "This is the same person who ran on abolishing the police just four years ago," Calanche said, "and now she wants to hand oversight to Kenneth Mejia. Stop playing games with public safety."
The LAPD already answers to a civilian Police Commission, an independent Inspector General, and the Controller's existing audit authority. There is no accountability gap here. There is only a power gap — and Hernandez just moved to fill it.
This is about controlling the narrative on police spending – and eventually controlling the spending itself.
Hernandez has voted against the city budget two years in a row, claiming too much goes to the LAPD. Soto-Martinez has called officer headcount targets "totally arbitrary" and voted against every proposal to grow the force. Together they are not asking for oversight. They are building a mechanism to defund by bureaucracy.
The new bureau takes over in phases. Each phase hands Mejia more authority over how the LAPD's finances are reviewed, tracked, and reported.
Every phase gets them closer to what they said out loud four years ago.
Sources:
- Jamie Paige, "Anti-cop Eunisses Hernandez's stunning bid to control the LAPD's budget," New York Post, March 24, 2026.
- "LA City Council wants to put LAPD's multi-billion dollar budget under financial watchdog," LAist, April 2026.
- "Plan to Shift LAPD Financial Oversight Faces Obstacles," California City News, April 2026.
- "LAPD projected to lose 150 officers by mid-2026, which would mark lowest staffing in 30 years," Police1, January 2025.
- "LAPD Chief Refuses to Enforce Gavin Newsom's Crackdown on ICE Agents," Western Journal, March 4, 2026.
- "LAW & DISORDER: California Lefties Derail LAPD Oversight Meeting," Hannity.com, January 28, 2026.
