Posted on 10/25/2025 1:07:39 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
On a brisk sunny morning in MacArthur Park recently, children played on a jungle gym as an open-air drug market operated nearby. Beside the park’s lake — which has witnessed more than a few bodies pulled from its murky depths — vendors prepared stuffed arepas for hungry patrons.
For years, the famed park has served as an urban oasis for thousands of Westlake residents hemmed in by concrete and asphalt. At the same time, however, the city has battled waves of gang violence, drug trafficking and growing homelessness.
Now, amid a city campaign to reduce crime in the neighborhood, officials have announced plans to erect a $2.3-million fence around the park — a proposal that has ignited debate within City Hall and among residents over the best way to keep the 35-acre green space accessible and safe for everyone.
Depending on whom you ask, the project will either improve safety or make it more difficult for residents to visit the park or to provide outreach services for the homeless people there.
The Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners voted unanimously Oct. 16 to approve the conceptual phase of the project as a way to address “ongoing public safety and quality-of-life challenges” that make it difficult for the city to perform maintenance and continue park improvements.
The board, which is appointed by the mayor’s office, did not elaborate on the challenges, but the park has long been a gathering place for homeless people who often experience mental health issues. It’s also become known for open-air drug sales. Last summer, a Long Beach man was stabbed to death near the park, and on Labor Day a man’s body was pulled from park lake.
Local business owners say the park’s problems scare off customers.
“The homeless want to live here but...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Fences aren’t always the solution.
Visiting relatives near my old home town I took a drive past the park where we used to watch the old Italian guys play bocce Sunday mornings (from after church until the Sunday spaghetti dinner was ready, anyway).
All closed and locked up behind a 10 foot plastic fence now.
All because someone left a cake out in the rain.
Not even 3rd world. It’s an outdoor 3rd world hospital and drug den. People in need of medical care, and drug addicts.
Karen bass is the cause.
The LAPD should hold lots of choir practices there.
only thing that will save MacArthur Park is 24x7x365 police patrols, arrests for ALL infractions regardless of big or small or legal citizen or illegal alien, and the DA and courts deal harshly with those convicted, and the the illegal aliens deported ... of course, we all know that NONE of that will happen ... period ...
I’ll never have the recipe again. Oh nooooooooooo.
Ha. At least someone knows those oldies.
Someone left the cake out in the rain.
A Park with a fence around it?
That is not a “Park,” it is a jail!
Sad to see this suggestion. It is truly a problem of “leaders” being soft, not “minding the store.”
California is doomed to continue down the road to Hell!
Get the Democrats out of office. They are to blame, PERIOD!
Yet they do not want Trump’s assistance with the National Guard.
Took til# 8. Well it’s a Saturday
Anyway I think it’s a classic rather than an oldie but that could be my denial talking
Bob Dylan called Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman” The best song ever written, so probably a classic
And Jimmy Webb wrote the green icing song so I think it’s a lateral classic at least
I was going to do that.
I don’t think that I can take it. Because it took so long to bake it.
“We have been told by our betters that fences don’t work”
This fence definitely ain’t gonna work because they’re going to let the same people in.
Do you think for a microsecond there’s going to be guards at the gate who are going to keep the precious homeless and druggies out?
I didn’t see any mention of that.
And it took so long to bake it. And I’ll never have the recipe again! Oh no!
THE DUCKS DO NOT WISH TO LIVE THERE ANY MORE
Is the cake still there?
But what about Trump’s ballroom???? /S
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