The LA City Council’s Democratic Socialist of America members have a vicious history of attacking cops, and have now launched a brazen attempt to seize control of the LAPD from Mayor Karen Bass and the Police Commission.
The tight knit bloc, made up of councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Nithya Raman — with City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s backing — are part politicians, part social justice warriors.
Soto-Martinez, who is leading the charge to control the nation’s third-largest police force, has openly identified as a police abolitionist.
He has previously revealed he wants to rip large chunks out of the LAPD’s funding and cut the number of officers, instead pouring the cash into prevention programs.
In a 2024 budget fight, he joined Hernandez and Raman in rejecting a spending plan to increase LAPD funding ahead of the soccer World Cup and Olympics.
A year later, he was one of just two councilmembers to vote against a $5 million emergency loan to cover LAPD overtime, tied to anti-ICE protests.
He also voted no on the 2023 LAPD union contract, opposing raises and retention bonuses, and no on adding patrols.
But the votes are only part of it. Soto-Martinez has been rewriting the rules of a local politician. He authored a motion putting the LAPD under a microscope during protests and immigration enforcement.
He backed new requirements forcing clearer officer identification in the field and has pushed to limit police cooperation with federal immigration authorities, such as ICE and Border Patrol.
Meanwhile Hernandez has the most explicit abolitionist profile. A self identified “Abolitionist Organizer,” her record is “steeped in abolition.”
She supports moving crisis calls away from police and backs the People’s Budget LA coalition, a defund the police organization.
In May 2024, she cast the only “no” vote on the entire city budget, pointing to the size of the LAPD allocation. In August 2023, she also voted no on the LAPD union contract and no on LAPD raises.
She has also proposed disarming all LAPD officers preset in city council chambers.
When Raman first ran for council in 2020 she “declared ‘Defund the Police’” and proposed turning LAPD into a “much smaller, specialized armed force,” shifting traffic enforcement, car crashes and nonviolent mental health calls elsewhere.
In 2026 a Times report shows she now says the city should maintain the size of its police force, saying LA needs enough officers to respond to 911 calls.
Even so, she voted against approving the 2023 LAPD labor contract and also voted against the January 2026 plan to hire an additional 170 police officers.
Mejia has long been aligned with the defund/reimagine public safety camp.
In 2021, CBS framed an interview with him around “misconceptions about ‘defund the police,’” and the left-wing British newspaper the Guardian quoted him blasting continued LAPD spending, asking whether the city would just keep “throwing money at the LAPD.”
More recently, Mejia joined Hernandez and advocacy groups in calling for a budget centered on services and unarmed crisis response.
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