Hello, and thanks for joining us, for sustaining us here on KLCS Public Media.

I'm David Nazar.

We're halfway through the year, and a Los Angeles has already witnessed one of its worst years ever.

Everything from deadly wildfires and a fatal fentanyl homeless crisis to overwhelming crime in L.A. metro that officials are trying to fix.

We began the year here on sustaining us with a special investigative report about the fentanyl crisis, which is overtaking LA's Skid Row and beyond.

No sooner do we publish this special PBS episode on YouTube.

We got tens of thousands of views and hundreds of comments.

What you're witnessing out here on LA's Skid Row is horrifying.

A woman deathly ill, drugged out on fentanyl, and nearly comatose skeleton trying to survive on the street.

An all too common occurrence here in Los Angeles with a homeless population.

I was unnerved.

The person I'm interviewing was not.

He's seen this all before.

Well.

She lives.

She needs some water.

She needs something.

You can't leave her like that.

Withdrawal must be.

She's in fentanyl withdrawal.

You can.

She needs an ambulance.

Well, what's going on here?

She's in withdrawal from fentanyl, and the withdrawals are absolutely debilitating.

And so she's lying there on the floor.

She's thirsty.

She wants water.

Can you two.

Can you have your office?

Bring some water for her, please?

Now, got your water.

You got water?

But she might do.

Well, we'll get her.

We'll get water.

She's gone.

But ambulance is going to come.

And hopefully what they'll do is, they can get her on some methadone or some oxygen to help level her out.

But if she returns right back here to the street, she's going to go right back to using again.

That's the problem.

She needs she needs some medical help right now.

Yeah.

And she knowing these medical help, she needs intervention or is that 911?

Yes.

I'm on the phone now.

Okay.

They're going to send someone.

Can someone get her some water?

How about someone?

Thank you so much.

Look, this is the tragedy of addiction.

When I was on the street.

You get to a certain point, and you're so deep into your addiction that it's no longer about getting high anymore.

It's about not getting dopesick.

And that's what she is right now.

She's in withdrawal from fentanyl, and it's the worst possible feeling.

I feel bad talking to you about this right now because I want to help her.

And so we done what we can.

We'll bring in the water we call 911 to try to help her out.

And hopefully the what else can we do for her while we're here right now?

Is that the the 911 the ambulance?

That's pretty much unless you want to go buy her some fentanyl and give it to her, because that's what she actually needs.

That's what her body is craving for.

And that is not going to solve a problem.

It's a short term fix and that she'll stop being in withdrawal, but she'll be right back into the situation again.

In two hours later, she'll be in withdrawal again because you have to use fentanyl so frequently so that the paramedics should be doing if they take her to the hospital is they'll get her on buprenorphine or Suboxone to stop the withdrawals that will help.

But then they're going to release her from the hospital, and she's going to be released right back out here to the street where she's going to continue to use because they don't have enough shelter beds, they don't have enough treatment.

There's no modicum to force her into drug treatment, which is what she really needs to get clean and get out of the situation.

Instead, everything's harm reduction and everything is just you can think harm reduction is in the ACLU.

I'm sorry to say it.

I look, I'm a Democrat.

I feel bad to say it, but it's true.

The whole argument around body autonomy is nihilistic.

We have an obligation as a community to intervene in these situations beyond just calling 911, which you is a short term fix, because there's nowhere for her to go.

And so we just get stuck in this perpetual cycle of this poor woman cycling in and out of addiction and in and out of homelessness, because the city state, our country refuses to change its policy, invest in recovery and treatment for people, and make the tough political decisions that are required to intervene upon someone like that.

Is there a possible solution to this drug crisis?

A solution for this woman strung out on fentanyl?

A crisis plaguing thousands of L.A. homeless.

An epidemic destroying tens of thousands of lives in Los Angeles, the Bay area, Seattle, Portland and beyond.

Well, first you have to, like, stop with the promise of harm reduction policies that help get us into this mess.

The argument from harm reduction, folks, is that we're keeping people alive.

But to what end?

That technically, she's alive.

You think that that's a good quality of life for that person?

How does Tom Wolf know exactly what's going on out here on these streets?

How does he know what's going on with this homeless woman?

Well, her tragic story begins with his tragic story about ten years ago, Tom had surgery and got hooked on pain pills.

He was married, had two kids, was a child support officer, a Bay area government employee making a good living.

Had a great life.

However, Tom began purchasing oxycodone on the street to support his habit after surgery.

He spent $100,000 on pills over the next year.

Stop paying the mortgage and all the debt from his wife.

And then Tom switched to heroin.

He became an IV drug user, lost his job, was unemployed.

His wife gave him an ultimatum get treatment or get out of the house.

Tom chose to leave the house, abandon his family, keep using drugs.

Eventually, Tom was homeless, with nothing to his name.

Now surviving on the streets, he committed crimes to maintain his addiction.

Got arrested six times in three months for being a drug mule.

Tom was the worst of the worst.

A criminal, a drug addict who worked for the drug dealers.

So Tom just doesn't talk the talk these days.

He walks the walk today, a decade later, miraculously, he is now a nationally recognized recovery expert.

He says the current homeless policies are what's destabilizing and destroying every West Coast city.

Policy should be that we build out a what they call a continuum of care.

It starts with stabilization, then goes to detox and residential treatment, transitional housing with job training, and then fully independent living.

She would benefit from going to a stabilization center or hospital to determine her medical needs, and then from there not being given the choice, being put into detox with methadone or buprenorphine and possibly a locked facility for a period of time.

So we're not just talking about keeping people alive.

We're talking about changing people's lives.

And you do that with recovery and treatment.

And so we as a community, as a state, as a city.

Needs to fund drug treatment and then change their policies on actually mandating people into treatment.

It's what's destabilizing all of these cities.

It's that you've got thousands upon thousands of people like this out on the street.

It not only creates blight, it's not only bad for them and unhealthy for them, but it puts a strain on our on our systems.

Right.

How many ambulance calls do they take a day to respond to someone who's in withdrawal or somebody who's drug, who's overdosed, or somebody in a meth induced psychosis?

It's not a sustainable model.

We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on it.

And look, the bottom line is that drugs aren't free.

People forget that.

And the government certainly isn't going to get into the business of giving drugs away.

They tried that in the 90s with the OxyContin problem with overprescribing.

That didn't work out so good.

So what we need to do is get this person off of drugs and get them help.

I know that this is difficult.

It's a difficult problem to solve.

But building $1 million per unit housing units where people can use drugs inside is not going to solve her problem.

It's going to solve her problem.

Is treatment and recovery.

Getting her off of the drugs.

And people say, oh, you know, she has to be willing to do that.

Baloney.

I was given a choice to either sit in jail or go to treatment.

And I chose treatment and it changed my life.

That works for a lot of people.

For the record, I've been repeatedly emailing the office of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass over the last few years to talk with her about this homeless crisis.

No reply.

They refused to speak with me, let alone answer my many emails or phone messages.

Mayor bass claims the homeless problem out here is getting better.

Where how I get there are various programs like the mayor's inside safe.

Kudos for that.

And to be fair, the mayor and county officials are taking some some homeless folks off the streets.

However, let's just be honest here the L.A. homeless crisis is the worst it's ever been for every homeless person, every homeless person the city and county find shelter for or services for so many more.

Make their way out to all of these streets out here.

So many of these homeless get imprisoned with the drugs, with the fentanyl.

So something is very wrong with homeless policy here in LA and throughout the state of California and the city and county and the state of California, just keep repeating the same failed policies.

And even a few homeless encampments are taken apart.

New ones are out here days a weeks later, as I said.

So how are things getting better?

Can someone explain?

Since we last reported about the homeless fentanyl crisis early this year, there have been some new developments.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has expanded the Inside Safe program throughout more parts of Los Angeles, and it's fair to say more homeless have been taken off the streets.

Also fair to say many have returned to the streets as well, which is unfortunately, obviously the ongoing dilemma for the city and the county.

However, the mayor is trying with her inside Safe program.

Also some promising news to speak of.

There has been a more proactive plan to finally, finally deal with MacArthur Park, located on famous Alvarado Street in Los Angeles.

MacArthur Park is the once iconic L.A. park that is now the notorious drug haven open air drug market homeless encampment that borders Alvarado and Wilshire Boulevard, and has notably been one of the most dangerous parks in America.

With all the drugs, the fentanyl, the gang violence.

Well, after a January gang shooting there, L.A. Councilwoman Eunice Hernandez, in collaboration with Mayor Karen Bass, launched a comprehensive initiative to improve things like safety crime.

Obviously, the homeless situation in the area, the many vendors that line the streets, selling goods to anyone and everyone.

We're basically dismantled barriers and fencing or installed on the sidewalks bordering MacArthur Park.

This to deter all illegal activities, and there's clearly been an increased LAPD presence.

The area has more police cars and more cops on the streets monitoring things, the city says.

As a result of these interventions, there has been a decrease in crime in the area and outreach team seven actively working with homeless folks to help find them shelter and services.

And now, despite these good efforts, the sad reality is MacArthur Park still has its encampments as some of the homeless and drug addicted population have slowly been returning to the park.

Although it's fair to say these coordinated efforts with Mayor Bass helping lead the way have led to some improvement with the parks condition and safety.

Now, things just obviously have to stay this way and continue to improve at MacArthur Park.

And now the city also has to finally begin efforting the fix to the homeless pandemic problem on Skid Row.

We brought you now, earlier this year, we introduce you to a Los Angeles family who lost everything in the East and Wildfire here in Altadena, California, which is part of L.A. County.

The couple lost their home, their cars, all their belongings, every cherished possession, a forever home that burned to the ground, leaving nothing to their names.

This couple told me the fire erased their entire history.

This happened to so many Angelenos.

In January 2025, thousands of homes out here and in the Palisades either completely destroyed or damaged in the deadly Palisades and eating fires.

January 2025 Los Angeles witnessed the worst wildfires on record.

It was as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped on L.A. in the aftermath of the deadly Palisades and Eastern fires.

Devastation like never seen before.

29 lives lost, thousands of homes and structures burned to the ground or badly damaged, tens of thousands of acres scorched and billions of dollars of financial ruin.

What could not be destroyed was the fighting spirit of so many courageous Angelenos who, with strength, survival and some savvy, and with a neighbor helping neighbors, are beginning to piece their lives together, beginning to rebuild Angelenos like Altadena residents Rachel and David Thaxton.

We used to sit here and have coffee and wave to our neighbors as they're driving by to go to work and enjoy our mountain view, our mountain view.

This is the front door that when I close to that Tuesday night, I just knew I was going to come back.

I didn't realize that would be nothing less.

This is our living room and up on the mantel we had our wedding pictures, our daughter's wedding picture, family pictures, and yeah, we didn't end up taking any of that stuff with us when we left.

I was just absolutely gutted.

And it just you just walk in and think, where am I don't even recognize it.

So I look at this and it's like I can barely tell where anything was.

So for me, David, it was just total devastation.

This is all that remains of Rachel and David Thaksin's property, their forever home, or so it seemed.

Their house now burned to the ground, their cars burned to the metal frame.

The heat and fire made certain of that.

Ethan was the out of control wild fire that destroyed much of the Altadena community here.

Altadena is located directly north of Pasadena, about 15 miles from downtown Los Angeles, a SoCal area famous for the Rose Bowl, the Tournament of Roses Parade, Caltech, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

For nearly 25 years, the Thaxton lived here.

Lifers, like so many of their neighbors in this quaint, picturesque Altadena community.

As Rachel and David explain, the night the fire broke out, they had gone to meet some friends on what was an unusually windy day.

Now, it's certainly not uncommon for the Santa Ana winds to fiercely howl throughout SoCal on dry, hot days, wreaking havoc and contributing to blazes igniting all over the place.

However, nearly 80 mile an hour ferocity east winds which fueled both the Palisades and eating fires, well, they're not so common.

As Rachel and David were driving home that night, there was a lot of smoke, and when they got to their house, they had no power.

Little did they know, that was going to be the least of their problems.

The next day we had gone with some friends to dinner, and as we were coming back home, we dropped them off and we could see the glow of the fire way off in the distance.

But, we came home and we had no power and we thought, you know, our daughter was encouraging us to go down and stay with our other local daughter.

So we, decided to go ahead and pack up some things.

So we did an overnight bag.

And as we were leaving, I just said to David, let me just grab our important papers.

I felt I was being a little overdramatic because, you know, we're not fire zone and we've seen the hills burned before and had no idea that this was going to be the end result.

So we really didn't take other than our papers, we didn't take anything else with us other than a change of clothes.

So you really have nothing right home except each other, right?

As Rachel explained, she and David are not unfamiliar with wildfires burning here in this SoCal region.

They witnessed several blazes over the years near their unincorporated Altadena community of L.A. County.

However, they never witnessed anything like this.

I've lived here long enough where I've seen fires in the mountains that I always thought, we're not in the fire zone.

And that night we left.

I kept thinking to myself and even told my wife, we're going to be back.

We're going to be back.

So I never thought that it would come this far.

And to see this and to think that everything that we've built up here is now gone, was our couch and everything is just sitting there.

Look out the window.

There's our ceiling fan.

That was right here.

And as you can see, we had a pretty good sized picture window.

So that for us was our our mountain view.

This is why we live.

We moved here.

Look at that.

The mountains are right there.

And our kitchen was over here.

We just remodeled that in 2020.

And it was we.

It was our kitchen.

We were so happy with it because we got everything we wanted.

And that kitchen.

And I know over the years, you both put a lot of money into this house to make it what it was.

Yes.

Yeah.

We redid the kitchen.

We had a bunch of upgrades done and, and this is our, is our daughter's bedroom back here.

That was our daughter's bedroom.

And they they shared the space for quite for their younger years.

And then as our older one got a little older, we actually kind of jimmied our dining room and made her her own little space for a few years until she moved out.

But yeah, this was this was their childhood home.

And we have just a lot of good memories, a lot of parties, a lot of school projects.

Oh my goodness.

There's know some of our wedding China.

That's your wedding.

That's our wedding was right now.

Yeah.

Because we had a China where the China Academy where we had a dining room right here.

Right.

And the China cabinet would have been right about here.

And the China cabinet was my mom's China cabinet that she gave to me.

And it was it was treasured because there was there was silverware in there that she and her mother had.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's weird to see the few things that did kind of survive.

And I'm just actually noticing our topping of our wedding cake that, Oh, my gosh, what does that say?

I'm missing?

She's still there.

That was part of your wedding cake.

How many years ago?

Five years ago this year.

35.

This year.

This.

This.

Actually, I think our books don't touch it because it will make a big powdery.

Yeah, yeah, but yeah, that was our bookcase.

We had a bunch of books in there.

That's right.

Because this wall right here would have been our was our bookcase.

So this is the left of my barbecue patio furniture.

This was a gazebo.

We drive up here and I and it's like I there's no point of reference.

So it looks completely unfamiliar.

The first time we came up, as we were driving the streets, I didn't even know what street we were on because I didn't have anything to kind of, yeah, give me a frame of reference for this report.

I have just one comment to share with you, even though we have many.

And that comment is from Rachel and David Thaxton, who I interviewed in that report.

They wrote me after we aired their story.

Quote, I finally had a chance to see the video this evening.

You told the story of so many Altadena Palisades residents in such a conversational and non sensational way, which we really appreciated.

Our lot has been cleared, an experience that was a mixed bag of emotions.

Thanks for talking with us.

Keep you posted.

Best wishes, David and Rachel Braxton.

Now you get why I'm sharing this one viewer comment.

This is the one that meant everything.

The factions are rebuilding their home and their lives, as are so many brave Angelenos currently trying to rebuild as well.

And one final story, one more to share with you this evening that made some headlines this past year.

And then a final word.

While it's fair to say that la metro has been mired in crime this past year, it's also fair to say Metro has been continuing its amazing build out of the massive transportation system all throughout L.A. County, a system that is greatly helping Los Angeles present and future.

Here are the challenges Metro is dealing with, and then the possible solution.

Los Angeles County has more people living here than any other county in the US.

About 10 million residents, many of them living in their car, navigating a concrete maze of interstates, freeways, highways, streets, roads, avenues, boulevards, bridges.

This concrete jungle spans over 4000mi, making L.A. County one of the largest in the world.

Life can be tough out here if you have to commute every day.

Jennifer Vitus knows all about this, so I'll tell you from my personal perspective.

Having driven across the county in very long distances, I much prefer to be on a train or a bus than I do in a car, because the gridlock is stressful.

The gridlock is, has an effect on people's mental health.

It has its effects on your body, your back, your mobility.

Ultimately, we know that people who take transit walks more.

We know that it helps them from a health perspective.

To give you an idea of how bad L.A. traffic is, here are just a few examples to get from downtown Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley on the freeway in your car, which is about 20 or 30 miles depending upon which Valley city you're traveling to.

That commute can take an hour or two in bad traffic.

To get from downtown L.A. to Long Beach.

About 25 miles can also take about an hour or two.

And don't even try taking the local city streets thoroughfares like Wilshire or Olympic Boulevards to get from downtown to Santa Monica, which is about 15 miles.

That can also take a couple of hours in traffic.

So you get the idea.

These days in L.A., there's no such thing as going against the traffic.

That's why lots of folks are taking la metro trains and busses throughout the county.

Can you blame them?

They hate their cars, hate the horrific traffic, hate the horrendous gas prices, and so they're riding the rail.

Jennifer VTA says with Metro, the Los Angeles public transportation system, we met with Venus in a little Tokyo Arts District station, which launched in June of 2023 as part of Metro's Regional Connector project.

That project, which together the metro system, the metro rail system.

So now, with this new station and a few others, you can go from a zoo set to Long Beach with a one seat ride.

You can go from East L.A. to Santa Monica with a one seat ride.

We're also working on, you know, projects to go through the city over to pass, potentially, and connect the San Fernando Valley down to Los Angeles.

We're extending what's known as a purple line or D line, and that's going to go farther west than it does now.

And then ultimately, we're also working on, light rail line for the East San Fernando Valley.

So we do have a very ambitious transit growth plan.

We are, obviously preparing for the Olympics, but also preparing to leave a legacy for Angelenos to be able to get around anywhere they want to cross the county using transit.

It's really sort of connecting and bridging this massive county together, isn't it?

Yes, it really is.

It makes a significant difference for the people of Los Angeles, makes transit, a lot more, feasible for you to go all over the county making sure that the people across Southern California can get where they need to go affordably and with ease.

What are they telling you?

What are you hearing?

We also hear that we also do have a large number of customers who rely on us, who rely on us to get where they need to go, that maybe they don't have a car, or maybe they can't afford the gas because gas prices are through the roof right now.

So there's a lot of folks who know where they can get that.

They can get across the county using Metro, and, really, truly appreciate it.

The build out of the Metro transportation system began a decade ago and continues today.

And as Venus explains, Metro is helping get people to their destinations more quickly, more economically, and possibly more comfortably with state of the art engineering throughout the entire system, especially with the trains which quietly run deep underground throughout downtown in the City of Angels without disrupting anything at street level, or the high tech engineering or the many underground elevators, walkways and terminals engineering that helps link massive LA County together.

Then there's the unique commissioned artwork of all kinds.

Some pieces several stories high, that Metro strategically placed on the walls all throughout the various stations.

So riders have a fine art museum ambiance of sorts.

All this as a multi-year metro construction project, further tunnels its way underground and above so that motorists can avoid the grueling traffic.

And as L.A. Metro continues to carve out the best possible transportation future for Los Angeles and beyond, Metro was also met with some challenges.

For some context, we take you back to February 2016, when I first began reporting about the L.A. Metro system, what we found back then here at the downtown L.A. metro station at seventh and Hope streets, were many people hopping the gate at the entrance and riding for free fare.

Evasion was a bad problem for Metro, and we also found there wasn't much security, if any, out here to keep riders safe.

And people I interviewed back then told me they were nervous.

Don't take our word for any of this, just read some of the comments.

According to many of the posts, crime and lack of security was very concerning.

Some wrote that for the most part, there were no security officials out here and they personally had witnessed various crimes or were crime victims themselves.

So fast forward to today as anything changed where crime and safety are concerned.

Well, here's what we found when I spoke with many riders taking the trains throughout the day, the majority of riders say they're very worried about their safety.

Now, to be fair, some folks say that things have gotten somewhat better this past year, especially given the fact that there seems to be more of a security presence out here, or at least more than a few years ago, to help de-escalate potentially dangerous situations.

However, almost every person we talked to today agrees that violence, crime and homelessness are serious metro problems.

The L.A. Metro Transportation project began well over a decade ago, and this system is vital for the future of L.A..

Since our airing of that special report, la metro has been working on its new plan to develop their own in-house safety department, their own police force, so to speak, so Metro can improve security measures without having to rely so much on outside law enforcement sources like LAPD and the L.A. Sheriff's Department.

Ultimately, Metro is going to have direct oversight and operational control of its law enforcement services.

More on Metro's efforts with their new safety plan on a future sustaining US broadcast now.

For more information about our program, just click on KLCS.org and click contact Us to send us your questions or comments or story ideas so we can hear from you or contact me directly at.

David Nazar news on X or on YouTube or just go to DavidNazarNews.

Contact me there.

You know I'll get back with you and be sure to catch our program here on PBS or catch us on the PBS app.

Thanks so much for joining us.