A Los Angeles prosecutor brought his family to MacArthur Park for a weekend picnic after promising to clean up the troubled grounds, according to social media posts.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman serves as the top prosecutor for Los Angeles County.
Hochman had pledged in June to clean up the park by Labor Day, according to earlier statements.
The prosecutor delivered on that promise by hosting his relatives for an outdoor meal at the site on Saturday, social media posts show. The gathering took place despite the park’s long-standing reputation for crime, according to the report.
“I promised we would do it many months ago and if I viewed the park as having not improved as far as public safety then I wasn’t going to risk the public safety of myself, my family, my friends and my colleagues to go to a unsafe park,” Hochman said Friday.
“But I’ve watched the efforts of law enforcement, I’ve also watched the efforts of the community organizations,” Hochman said.
The district attorney made the initial commitment during a highly publicized multi-agency law enforcement raid at the park in June, reports show.
“We will not allow MacArthur Park to be a cemetery any longer,” he had proclaimed.
That pledge came after officers targeted individuals smoking fentanyl openly at the grounds, according to the report.
Police focused on users near a litter-strewn corner at Alvarado and Seventh streets, reports show.
Officers placed several individuals in handcuffs and hauled them away from the corner, reports show. Others scurried from the scene as police moved in, according to the account.
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MacArthur Park has carried a bad reputation since the 1980s as dealers and gangs moved into the area, historical reports show.
As many as 30 murders occurred at the location in 1990 alone, crime records show.
The grounds have long served as an epicenter for homelessness and heavy narcotics use, reports show. Throngs of addicts buy fentanyl and meth there each day, according to the account.
Federal law enforcement authorities have also prioritized operations targeting the local drug trade this year, officials said.
Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, made cracking down on the drug trade at the park a priority, officials said.
His office has targeted MacArthur Park alongside other hotspots in a series of drug busts, prosecutors said. The federal prosecutor previously described the recreation area as an “open-air drug market,” statements show.
“We’ve come a long way in returning the park back from the criminals and drug users to the community. More work to do, but we’re headed in the right direction,” Essayli, a Republican, told a local FOX reporter on Saturday.
Hochman acknowledged that conditions across the park remain imperfect, statements show. There is still a long road ahead for safety efforts, the prosecutor said.
A FOX11 reporter noticed visible drug use continuing in certain sections of the park this past Friday, the station reported.
Hochman maintained that the area has shown great progress despite the persistent issues, according to earlier remarks.
At least 37 people have been arrested across major joint federal and local drug operations at MacArthur Park this year, authorities reported.
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