LOS ANGELES — Karen Bass, an early frontrunner for Los Angeles mayor, said she would get tough on crime and reform policing to address a spike in violence across the U.S.’s second-largest city.
Bass said another top priority is addressing the city’s worsening homeless crisis by fighting for recognition at the federal level that it’s an emergency, a step that would free up more resources.
“People around the city do not feel safe,” said Bass, a six-term Democratic congresswoman representing a Los Angeles district. “There is a feeling of fear in the city. It’s very reminiscent to me of where the city was in the ’80s and the ’90s,” she said, referring to a period in which the city was in a grip of a crack-cocaine epidemic.
