L.A. is safer than its been in decades, but crime is an issue dominating the mayors race

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Homicides in Los Angeles are down to levels not seen since the 1960s.Neighborhoods once awash in gang violence now sometimes go weeks, even months, without a shooting.

And the follow-home robberies and street takeovers that captured the public’s attention in recent years have largely subsided.By many measures, the city is safer than it has been in generations — and yet voters following L.A.’s hotly contested mayoral race might think the opposite.The challengers to Mayor Karen Bass have zeroed in on homelessness and public drug use to argue she hasn’t delivered on public safety, while also criticizing how the Police Department has operated and been funded during her tenure.Mike Bonin, a former L.A.City Council member, said the fact that Spencer Pratt — the former reality TV star who has been attacking Bass from the right — has gained so much traction in the race is proof of how Bass and other candidates to the left have failed to change “prevailing narratives that the city is unsafe.” Pratt has been particularly active on social media, where he has shared artificial-intelligence videos created by fans depicting him as various superheroes coming to the rescue of a city that, under Democratic rule, has turned into a dystopian hellscape.In a March 26 post on Substack, Pratt railed against the thousands of drug-related calls that emergency officials respond to every month.

He has said that if elected mayor, he would order the police and fire chiefs and the county health director to “treat every encampment as a grave-disability zone.”“No new laws needed,” he wrote.“No endless task forces.” California Hollywood service organizations conducted their own homeless count to help them adapt their outreach to a changing population that has fewer tents and more people sleeping rough or in vehiclesFlanking Bass on the left is Nithya Raman, a progressive City Counci...