The Brief

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said he was blindsided by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal Thursday to curtail the superintendent’s duties and he disagrees with it, although it’s unclear what he can do to stop it.

“Tony Thurmond is proud and grateful to work with Gov. Newsom. They’re both champions of public education,” said Elizabeth Sanders, spokeswoman for the California Department of Education, which Thurmond heads. Sanders was speaking on behalf of the superintendent.

“Unfortunately, on this particular issue they are not aligned.”

In his State of the State address on Thursday, Newsom proposed shifting oversight of the Department of Education, a 2,000-employee state agency, from the superintendent to the State Board of Education. The move would concentrate more power over K-12 schools with the governor, who appoints the school board.

The superintendent would remain an elected position, but with diminished and less defined duties.

Referencing a December report from Policy Analysis for California Education, Newsom’s aim is to simplify California’s convoluted system of K-12 school governance. Currently, education leadership comes from the governor, the Legislature, the State Board of Education, the superintendent and the Department of Education — who may or may not have the same vision for how to best run schools and teach children. At the local level, school boards and county offices of education also have a good deal of power over budgets and day-to-day school operations.

The result of the many-headed leadership structure is that schools often don’t know which policies to follow, according to the PACE report. Guidelines can be contradictory, redundant or just plain incoherent, researchers found.

A slew of education advocacy groups have supported Newsom’s proposal, saying it will clarify a system that’s been confusing and inefficient for a century. California is one of only a handful of states with such an education governance model.

‘Unnecessary disruption’

Thurmond’s staff had a few hints that an announcement might be forthcoming, but otherwise was caught off guard by Newsom’s proposal, Sanders said. They also hadn’t talked to PACE researchers about their report, although PACE staff said they reached out to the department prior to the report's publication.

Thurmond questions the point of the change, Sanders said.

“It’s unclear how this would benefit students and families,” Sanders said. “It’s an unnecessary disruption. … We should be staying focused on creating results for students.”

If the governor really wanted to help schools, he should pour more money into K-12 education. The Department of Education has been underfunded for years, she noted, and schools could use more funds for initiatives like tutoring and mandatory kindergarten.

John Affeldt, managing attorney at Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm focused on education, also questioned the value of Newsom’s proposal. It would take power away from the voters and give it to the governor, which might be great if the governor supports public education but may backfire if a governor doesn’t, he said.

“It might improve the governance structure a bit, but I’m not sure it’s worth the tradeoff,” Affeldt said. “It might be a lot of political theater for not much real change.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The number of homicides in the city of Los Angeles fell by 19% last year, the lowest level in decades, according to a police department report that cited several factors for the decline, including violence reduction strategies and partnerships with community organizations.

There were 230 homicides in the city in 2025, 54 fewer than the previous year, said police Chief Jim McDonnell at a Thursday morning news conference.

The report also shows fewer people were shot citywide, including those who were injured but not killed. Shooting victims were down from 981 to 889, an 8% drop.

Gang-related homicides were down 4%.

The chief credited more effective policing for the crime drop, but acknowledged it's not the only factor.

“Policing plays a critical role in public safety but it is one of a much larger system,” McDonnell said. “Crime trends are influenced by many factors beyond policing, including economic conditions, population changes, substance abuse, homelessness, legislative decisions and access to services.”

Traffic deaths decline

Homicides involving unhoused people remained a major problem, rising 20% last year to 61, according to the LAPD.

The department reported 290 fatal traffic crashes, a decline from the 302 the previous year. Of those, 97 were vehicular manslaughter cases, according to the Police Department.

The report notes traffic deaths are still outpacing homicides across the city.

Citywide, property crimes also fell last year. There were 85,170 theft and other crimes last year compared to more than 205,000 forty years ago.

While crime is generally down, the LAPD has the fewest officers it has had in more than a decade. But its budget still comprises more than half the general fund budget.

“When we invest in our law enforcement, we see safer neighborhoods and real results,” said City Councilmember John Lee, who joined McDonnell at the news conference.

L.A.’s crime picture follows state and national trends. After a spike during the early days of the pandemic, homicides are down nationwide.

LAist has reached out to criminologists for comment, but so far has not received responses.

Reaction to immigration raids

During the news conference, McDonnell addressed concerns that immigrant communities would be less inclined to report crimes and cooperate with police given the tactics of federal immigration agents.

That was “our fear,” McDonnell said.

“While there may have been some lack of reporting, I think we’re on track going in the right direction and trying to regain support in communities that may have waned or been lost,” he said.

While he did not comment directly on the killing of two people by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, the chief was critical of ICE tactics.

“What we’ve seen since June here in Los Angeles and seen across the country, we’re as frustrated as everybody else about the way that’s being done,” McDonnell said.

He said the LAPD will continue its policy prohibiting cooperation with immigration authorities.

This story was originally published by The LA Local on Jan. 29, 2026.

Jonathan Hale has been painting crosswalks at some of the city’s most dangerous intersections for over a year, turning neglected streets into quiet acts of protest and prevention. That work led to his arrest last fall on vandalism — a moment caught on video that went viral.

So far, the city isn’t pursuing a misdemeanor charge, and the incident gave Hale a chance to present his vision for a safer Los Angeles to Mayor Karen Bass’ office. Now, he’s proposing an unusual way for the city to make his guerrilla crosswalks legal: permitted painting parties.

“We’re arguing for a legal mechanism. We should be able to permit street closures, as if you were permitting a block party, and then we can actually do the thing,” Hale told The LA Local. “We can make these (crosswalks) while the street is closed. We can add these compliance lines, and it would be like some sort of city-sanctioned street art program. We really want this to be like an alley oop for the city.”

He met with the mayor’s office to discuss this proposal in December as the lead of the pedestrian advocacy group People’s Vision Zero. His ultimate goal is to find a legal pathway for residents like him to paint crosswalks.

His group’s name is a play on the Vision Zero initiative, launched by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2015 to eliminate traffic deaths over the next decade.

“I got the idea because I’m a pedestrian — we all are,” Hale said. “I started painting crosswalks to see whether this could be a way to raise awareness around the issue and create lasting change. It’s gratifying. You get to be outside and meet people in your community and organize.”

In their proposal to the mayor’s office, People’s Vision Zero presents a “block party” model for installing crosswalks, led by residents who could follow specific state standards, as a low-cost way to address dangerous streets while working with city agencies, rather than waiting years for formal infrastructure projects to move forward.

“I think they see the momentum in the moment,” Hale said about the city. “We really want this to be like an alley-oop for the city. But I think it’s going to be unbelievably hard. It’s going to require the coordination of so many different bureaucratic organs. But we want to do it.”

Sergio Godinez, a spokesperson for Mayor Bass, confirmed that the mayor’s office has met with Hale and city departments “to explore solutions that are innovative and will expedite crosswalk installations across Los Angeles.”

“Mayor Bass believes that streets and sidewalks should be safe and accessible for all Angelenos, no matter how they travel,” Godinez said. “The City will continue to install crosswalks that comply with federal, state, and local regulations.”

Hale argues that Los Angeles’ official Vision Zero program has failed to meet its goal. In 2024, there were 303 traffic deaths in Los Angeles and 290 last year, according to the latest data from the Los Angeles Police Department.

Hale started his advocacy work with the activist group Crosswalk Collective LA, which taught him most of what he knows about crosswalks, including how to design them within city code and use them to raise awareness about safer streets.

“We would love to see some sort of official sanctioning of this within guidelines,” Hale said. “That would be the ultimate goal because crosswalks alone aren’t going to change anything. We’re just adding a crosswalk for drivers to more easily see pedestrians, but that’s not going to solve traffic violence on its own.”

For years, various groups have been calling attention to Los Angeles’ most dangerous intersections. They called out the city’s slow response, such as the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and 4th Street in Koreatown, where a driver killed 9-year-old Nadir Gavarrete last summer. The city installed a temporary traffic circle, signage and crosswalks years after securing funding and after the boy’s death.

The High-Injury Network from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, a map of streets with disproportionately high rates of collisions and fatalities, makes it easier to identify these dangerous areas. Activists like those in the Crosswalk Collective have emphasized the urgent need for both community-led interventions and meaningful city action to make streets safer.

The group has drawn increased attention on Instagram in recent weeks after Hale was arrested and cited in December for painting a crosswalk in Westwood. In the video that went viral, Hale is seen being handcuffed by an officer as bystanders shout, “Let him go, he’s not doing anything.”

Hale was cited for “vandalism on city property” and received a misdemeanor for the offense that was later dropped.

Not long after, Hale also started building benches that he wants to place around the community.

Michael Jenkins, an attorney and lecturer at USC Gould School of Law, said that since the city of Los Angeles owns the street, nobody can make a permanent marking on it — only the city government can authorize that.

Jenkins added that crosswalk installation is governed by a formal city process and professional traffic safety standards, not individual judgment. “Governments don’t install crosswalks willy-nilly. They don’t just do it based on a whim,” he said, noting that traffic engineers evaluate whether a crosswalk is necessary and appropriate based on established criteria.

As a result, residents “cannot simply decide in their judgment that they believe the street is dangerous to pedestrians and then paint a crosswalk on the street” outside the required approval process. Those who painted an unauthorized crosswalk largely conceded their actions were illegal, Jenkins said, describing it as civil disobedience or political protest, but added the action was “obviously not allowed.”

For now, Hale has paused painting crosswalks, but he hasn’t stopped advocating for safer streets.

Crosswalks alone won’t solve the city’s pedestrian safety problems, he says, but he thinks they can make a meaningful difference — and he has other ideas as well.

“Imagine using something like daylighting — the red-curb areas near intersections — and adding planter boxes to narrow them. That would make the intersections themselves narrower and safer,” Hale said.

Hale can envision a safer version of Los Angeles. He just needs to convince the city it will take a group effort.

If you've ever found yourself in Santa Monica at dusk, cruising along the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Lincoln Boulevard, there's a good chance the bright baby blue glow of Mel's Drive-In has caught your eye.

With its imposing, tuxedo-wearing penguin perched atop the neon sign, the iconic Southern California diner is a vivid example of mid-20th-century Googie-style architecture. It also marks the official terminus of historic Route 66, the famed roadway connecting Chicago to the Pacific Ocean, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary.

The history

The building dates back to 1959, when it housed the Penguin Coffee Shop, serving cheeseburgers and malts — hence the penguin sign — to hungry travelers. In 1991, it was converted into a more mundate dental office, until 2016, when the Weiss family — third-generation owners of the Mel's Drive-In diner chain founded in San Francisco — purchased and restored the property.

The original Mel's Drive-In, started by Mel Weiss in 1947, was one of the pioneers the American drive-in concept, offering carhop service where food orders were delivered directly to customers in their vehicles. The restaurant made a lasting impression on many, including director George Lucas, who featured it prominently in his 1973 film American Graffiti.

Colton and Chasen Weiss, grandsons of Mel, recall hearing from their grandfather that Lucas "was always a big Mel's fan" and asked to film there. Their grandfather was reluctant but agreed.

"It made Mel's famous and made him famous," Colton said, immediately cementing the restaurant's place in Southern California's cultural landscape. There are now Mel's Drive-In locations in Sherman Oaks and West Hollywood.

Googie explained

Architectural rendering of the Penguin Coffee Shop at Lincoln and Olympic boulevards by architects Louis Armet and Eldon Davis, September 8, 1959. The Weiss family used original plans to guide their restoration.

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The style is named after the Googie coffee shop designed by the same architects, Louis Armet and Eldon Davis, in downtown Los Angeles in 1949. Ruthann Lehrer, an architectural historian and member of the Santa Monica Conservancy, describes the style as featuring "dramatic cantilevered roofs and plate glass windows...designed to attract passing motorists."

Of the 4,000 buildings Armet and Davis designed with glowing neon and angular forms, only a handful survive, most notably Norm's in West Hollywood and Pann's in Westchester.

The Penguin Coffee Shop illuminated at night in the 1960s. The building's dramatic Googie architecture was designed to attract passing motorists with glowing neon and angular forms.

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The aesthetic echoed the era's car design. "If you look at an old '55 Chevy...those big tail fins...you get that same kind of look and feel as a Googie building," Colton explained.

"Los Angeles really wanted to be a city of the future," said Nina Fresco, also of the Conservancy. Googie was the city's playful answer, distinct from Route 66's roadside vernacular elsewhere.

The restoration

In 2016, after the dental office closed, the Weiss family bought the building. They'd known about the Penguin Cafe's history because they had often driven past the building and seen the penguin sign.

But after 25 years as a dental office, "the whole infrastructure of that building was not a restaurant anymore," Colton said, with super-low ceilings and white stucco walls. It wasn't until someone used a sledgehammer to break through the drywall that they uncovered the original rock facade, which he described as "like unearthing some ancient artifact."

Realizing what they had, the Weiss family enlisted the help of Googie experts and preservationists Adriene Biondo and Chris Nichols, who secured the original plans for the Penguin Coffee Shop. This allowed them to restore as much of the authentic design as possible, including the iconic ball-and-teardrop light fixtures in the dining area and the exterior landscaping.

The original Penguin Coffee Shop interior featured a dramatic rock facade and teardrop lighting fixtures. During restoration, the Weiss family discovered this rock wall hidden behind drywall, describing it as "like unearthing some ancient artifact.

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The restoration took two years. Upon opening in 2018, the restoration immediately drew attention from preservationists and the community, earning the Santa Monica Conservancy Historic Preservation Award in 2019.

According to Lehrer, Mel's is one of the only remaining Googie buildings in Santa Monica — what Fresco calls "the last bird standing" — as others have been demolished to make way for mixed-use development.

"So many locations are getting torn down...building high rises...it's losing a lot of its aesthetic. It's sad to see," Colton said. In Los Angeles, small-scale buildings face an uncertain fate as the land beneath them becomes increasingly valuable.

Full circle

The diner has since become known for its high-quality diner food, and as a photogenic stop for tourists taking selfies at the end of Route 66. When the Weiss family first arrived, there were no signs marking its unique location. The city installed them after Mel's opened — as if the official terminus had been waiting for the right destination. Now, through a partnership with the Route 66 Society, the diner hands out certificates of completion to road trippers who've made the journey from Chicago.

The interior of Mel's Drive-In features restored ball-shaped light fixtures and terrazzo floors that echo the original 1959 Penguin Coffee Shop design.

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Colton recalls a sunburned man in his 70s who'd driven the entire route in his 1960s Corvette Stingray, bucket list complete, beaming as he received his certificate. "It's a really special place, and it is special to me," Colton said. "So that definitely means it's special to everybody else."

That baby blue glow is still doing exactly what it was designed to do all those years ago: catching the eye of passing motorists.

A taxpayer-funded program that provides unhoused people with tents, meals, bathrooms and around-the-clock security in a South L.A. parking lot will close on Jan. 31, according to the nonprofit that operates it.

Urban Alchemy is terminating a $1.2 million contract with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to run the program through the current budget year, which ends in June.

The San Francisco-based nonprofit says it’s not getting enough funding under that agreement to keep the site open.

“The economics of the contract don’t work,” an Urban Alchemy representative told LAist. “It reached a point where we started losing money on it, and we had to make the decision about what’s best for our organization.”

The Lincoln Safe Sleep Village on South Central Avenue was one of only a handful of similar government-sanctioned tent encampments operating around the state.

Regional homelessness officials and a federal judge raised concerns about the Safe Sleep Village last year after observers found the site was operating at half capacity while the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, was paying it to operate at full capacity.

Urban Alchemy said a portion of the site was closed in 2024 because LAHSA and the city of L.A. instructed it to do so.

Now that the program is closing down entirely, city and LAHSA officials are scrambling to transfer remaining residents to other shelters.

People living at the site first learned of the impending evictions late last week, according to multiple residents interviewed by LAist. One of them, Miles Johnson, said he’d been living there with his girlfriend for 10 months.

“ We just got moved,” he said. “We just got put out. All our stuff is still in bags.”

LAHSA says it has been working to secure alternative shelter placements for 25 people who were living at the Safe Sleep Village.

Ahmad Chapman, a spokesperson for LAHSA, said the agency expects to make housing offers to all remaining participants before the closure.

The main entrance to the Lincoln Avenue Safe Sleep Village, located in a parking lot in South L.A.

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Residents displaced

The Lincoln Safe Sleep Village is located near the intersection of South Central Avenue and East 25th Street in a parking lot next to the historic Lincoln Theater. It’s in Councilmember Curren Price’s ninth district.

A South L.A. nonprofit called the Coalition for Responsible Community Development purchased the property in 2020 using state Project HomeKey funds. It has plans to build a 60-unit affordable housing complex there soon.

Price’s office told LAist this week that news of Urban Alchemy ending its contract to run the site came as a surprise.

“Until this recent news, our expectation was to transition any remaining residents by the end of this year,” Price’s communications director Angelina Valencia-Dumarot told LAist. “This sudden change disrupts that plan and creates uncertainty for unhoused neighbors currently at the site.”

On Tuesday afternoon, city of L.A. crisis response teams were transporting several residents and their belongings from the Safe Sleep Village to other nearby open shelter beds.

“They dumped me off at a place and I almost didn't get a bed,” James Rudy told LAist. “This was all last minute. I was afraid they were going to screw me.”

He said he was forced to throw away most of his clothing and belongings during the move. Rudy is now staying at a shelter 5 miles away called Testimonial Community Love Center, where clients are required to leave each day between 8:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., he said, adding that he preferred the tent village.

“The place we left wasn’t that bad.” Rudy said. “I was in a tent, but at least I was able to do what I needed to do. Here it’s not really practical.”

Tracy Wallace told LAist on Tuesday that her husband had been transported to another shelter, and she was waiting to reunite with him there.

“We're gonna be apart, not sleeping together,” she said. “Because one side is for men and the other side is for women, but that's still fine.”

Urban Alchemy said it was making former residents’ well-being a top priority. The organization estimated that, as of this Wednesday, there were seven residents still waiting on alternative placements.

“As we wind down our operations at this site, we appreciate the efforts underway to help guests move to safe, supportive places.” spokesperson Jess Montejano said in a statement.

Urban Alchemy told LAist that five of its 15 workers were laid off this week. Ten have been transferred to work in other Urban Alchemy projects, and the organization is working to connect the laid-off employees to other jobs, Urban Alchemy said.

The nonprofit bills itself as a social enterprise, hiring mostly formerly incarcerated people.

Some displaced residents from the Lincoln Safe Sleep Village were transported to alternative shelters on Tuesday.

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Cutting ties with LAHSA

LAHSA had contracted with Urban Alchemy to operate the Safe Sleep Village since 2022. Annual funding for the site was reduced from $2.3 million last budget year to $1.2 million this year.

The latter amount was supposed to pay for 46 tent spaces. But Urban Alchemy said the contract didn’t cover its fixed costs.

“We have to provide the staff no matter what, per the terms of the contract, whether it’s one person or 46,” an Urban Alchemy representative said. “We tried to work with [LAHSA] often, to try to find a way for it to pencil, and it just wasn’t the case.”

Urban Alchemy said LAHSA “arbitrarily changed its funding formula,” resulting in the nonprofit losing nearly $1 million on the contract.

The nonprofit first notified LAHSA on Dec. 22 that it planned to terminate the contract, both parties confirmed to LAist.

According to LAHSA payment records, Urban Alchemy spent about 69% of its budget on personnel for the 2022-23 budget year. Payroll records for February 2024 showed an average of eight staff members working at the site around-the-clock.

Last Thursday, one month after notifying LAHSA about the closure, Urban Alchemy’s director of operations in L.A. emailed city and LAHSA staff, demanding help rehousing residents.

“Given the urgency of the closure date, ongoing uncertainty places guests and frontline staff in an untenable position,” Tim Kornegay wrote in a Jan. 22 email. “Leadership action is critically needed now to prevent avoidable harm.”

The next day, LAHSA representatives told Urban Alchemy about a transfer plan for the people still living at that Safe Sleep site, the agency said.

Early this week, Mayor Karen Bass’s office and Price’s office told LAist they were aware of the situation and supported LAHSA’s work to prevent people from winding up with nowhere to go.

City of Los Angeles crisis teams helped transport residents to new shelter locations before the closure.

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A federal judge weighs in

Months before Urban Alchemy announced it would shut down the South L.A. site, questions about its funding and capacity made their way to a federal judge.

The situation emerged as the city of L.A. is under a court order to provide more shelter for unhoused Angelenos and LAHSA is under scrutiny for having failed to properly manage hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with service providers like Urban Alchemy.

Last year, LAHSA paid the nonprofit $2.3 million based on inaccurate data about the site’s capacity, records show. On paper, Urban Alchemy had 88 available beds on site. In reality, half that many were available.

Officials from the Homeless Services Authority had instructed the nonprofit in April 2024 to close down operations in one of two converted parking lots, according to emails reviewed by LAist. Dozens of plywood tent platforms were removed, but LAHSA did not update the capacity data or funding for the site until more than one year later.

The city of L.A. and LAHSA continued to report outdated capacity data about the South L.A. tent program to a judge overseeing a settlement that requires the city to open 13,000 new shelter beds by next June.

In November, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter described the situation as “obvious fraud.”

Michele Martinez, a special master appointed to help enforce the terms of the settlement, visited the site in June and found that it appeared to be operating at half capacity. She then tried to verify the number of beds available at the site with city officials, but did not get an answer, Carter said at a November court hearing.

The city of L.A. corrected the information reported to the judge after one member of LAHSA’s governing board, the LAHSA Commission, visited the site and reported what he saw there.

Commissioner Justin Szlasa said he had voted to approve millions in funding for Urban Alchemy last year with the understanding that the South L.A. space could accommodate 88 people. But when he visited in May 2025, he saw that half of it was closed.

Szlasa filed a public records request with LAHSA in September to obtain the contracts and payment details for the Urban Alchemy site, but he has not yet received a full response, he said.

He told LAist he’s been asking for an evaluation of the contract to be put on the LAHSA Commission’s agenda.

Urban Alchemy does not have any remaining contracts with LAHSA, but the organization runs a tent village in Culver City and has some other contracts with the city of L.A.

The organization recently pulled out of operating a large homeless shelter in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district after the nonprofit said it did not feel "supported" by the city amid scrutiny over shelter finances.