Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said Friday that plans for a Labor Day weekend picnic at MacArthur Park are moving forward, saying that he wouldn’t risk going with his family, friends and colleagues to an unsafe park.
The district attorney had said in June following a series of drug raids at the park, “Here’s my promise, Labor Day this year, 2026, I am going to come with my family and I am going to have a picnic in MacArthur Park because MacArthur Park is going to be safe enough to have that picnic.”
Hochman said then that he was inviting Los Angeles police and various city officials including Mayor Karen Bass, every city council member and every member of the county Board of Supervisors “to join us here for a picnic on Labor Day because MacArthur Park will be that safe.”
The district attorney told reporters Friday, “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. But I’ve watched the efforts of law enforcement, I’ve also watched the efforts of the community organizations.”
Hochman called the park “iconic” and said “this used to be the kind of park you would bring young kids to from all over, not just from the neighborhood but all over Los Angeles.”
” … But we haven’t had that park for decades, 10, 20, maybe even 30 years,” he said, noting that the Los Angeles Police Department’s random patrols of the park are sending a “deterrent message that no longer is this park safe for criminal activity, it’s actually safe for families.”
The district attorney lauded City Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, noting that her staff has “worked incredibly hard this summer to do what they can to clean up the park and make it safe for families.”
“It’s not perfect. I don’t want in any way to suggest that this park doesn’t still have a lot of problems. It does,” he said. “But I see great progress having been made in this park.”