LA City Council president caught using LAPD as personal security while calling to defund LAPD
The president of the Los Angeles City Council has come under heavy scrutiny for her role in slashing the budget of the Los Angeles Police Department following revelations that she used LAPD officers as personal security while calling for the department to be defunded.
Democratic city council leader Nury Martinez used LAPD officers as security officers for her neighborhood since April, Spectrum News 1 reported.
The councilwoman stopped using them as her security detail when reporters, like those from the outlet, started asking her questions about it.
“It’s kind of ironic,” Det. Jamie McBride, director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League said. “Here she is demanding $150 million be reallocated from the police budget, but yet she has security at her house by the Los Angeles Police Department.”
Martinez declined to answer questions posed to her by the press directly, but her spokesperson, Rick Coca, told journalists that she started using the LAPD for personal security after her family received death threats. The LAPD was reportedly assigned to her on April 4 for 24-hour protection until that was reduced to 7am to 9pm with patrols and check-ins.
"Clearly, it's an abuse of power and abuse of position," McBride said. "When you take a car away from patrolling the streets, that car could have been on patrol preventing a violent crime from occurring, could have responded to somebody's call for help, a whole slew of things could have happened with that one car."
McBride estimates that the Democrat’s security detail cost the police department more than $100,000 in taxpayer dollars.
Martinez was instrumental in cutting the LAPD’s budget, having filed a motion last week to slash $150 million from the department. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has vowed to follow through with the move.
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