The Brief

It’s now nearly impossible to pass through the majority Latino neighborhood of Oak View in Huntington Beach without being captured on camera. The city quietly signed two contracts in April to install 10 high-tech surveillance cameras trained on the main entrances, arteries and gathering areas of the densely-packed neighborhood that covers about half a square mile.

The AI-equipped cameras have 360 degree vision, night vision, and most are capable of magnifying a subject up to 32 times, like a telescope, without losing image quality. They also expose long simmering tensions in Oak View.

On the one hand, some residents of this historically neglected neighborhood told LAist they welcomed the added surveillance if it helps deter crime and catch criminals.

But others question the city’s motives at a time when local officials have pledged to support the federal government’s efforts to find and deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. They worry the cameras could be used to facilitate racial profiling, or that they could lead to Oak View residents being targeted for federal immigration enforcement.

“The truth is we need more security in this community,” said Hortensia Villanueva, who said she’s lived in the community for more than three decades.

At the same time, Villanueva said things were already “tense” in the community since immigration agents began chasing, tackling and detaining suspected undocumented immigrants across Los Angeles and Orange County.

“What we’re seeing on television, the children are freaking out thinking their parents are going to be taken away or beat up,” Villanueva said. “That affects all of us.”

She said she has mixed feelings about the cameras, and hopes they will only be used to catch criminals, and to curb crimes like graffiti and drunk driving.

In an emailed response to questions about the cameras from LAist, City spokesperson Corbin Carson wrote that the Oak View cameras “were installed due to incidents of vandalism, gun violence, and assaults.” He said additional cameras are being installed throughout the city.

“These cameras will provide real-time officer safety information to responding officers by delivering critical, situational awareness before officers arrive on scene,” he wrote.

LAist also reached out about the cameras to City Council members Gracey Van Der Mark and Casey McKeon, who also sit on the city’s Oak View Task Force, but did not receive a response.

Split contracts, no city council vote

Public records show the city signed two separate contracts in April with the security company Convergint to install the 10 cameras in and around the Oak View neighborhood.

Rules require City Council approval for any contract for services worth more than $100,000.

The contracts, if combined, would have met that threshold.

One of the contracts was for four 360-degree cameras at a cost of $50,488; the other, at a cost of $96,058, was for six camera pairs that allow for 360-degree surveillance, 32x optical zoom, movement tracking and audio detection.

Approving the contracts without a City Council vote “raises red flags,” said Mark Bixby, a local watchdog and publisher of Surf City Sentinel, who discovered the camera contracts.

By avoiding a vote, the city also avoided a public debate about the cameras and a chance for city council members to ask questions about their intended use.

Carson, the city spokesperson, said the contracts were “completed at different times with different funding sources” and one being a grant. “Therefore, the contracts were procured separately,” Carson said.

But both contracts are dated April 3, 2025, in the city’s contract database. They were both signed by Burns and other city officials, and approved by City Manager Travis Hopkins. Burns told LAist he didn’t recall approving the cameras, and didn’t have any information about them.

A 360-degree security camera is affixed to a light pole in Oak View.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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In February 2023, the council did unanimously approve funding for five security cameras that year to address retail crime in the city at a total cost of $50,000. During the meeting, police department leaders said they hoped to install 25 security cameras around the city over the subsequent five years, focused on areas with the most retail crime. But it’s unclear if the cameras in Oak View are part of that plan. There are retail businesses around the perimeter of the neighborhood, but not in the vicinity of most of the cameras.

Oscar Rodriguez, a former City Council candidate who grew up in Oak View, said he and other community leaders have questions, including “if this type of surveillance is going to be used for immigration enforcement in some way, shape, or form or capacity? And if so, is the city of Huntington Beach and the Huntington Beach Police Department going to assist immigration officials with their immigration enforcement?”

Huntington Beach’s growing surveillance network

The cameras add to a growing surveillance network around the city, with a particular focus on Oak View. The city also has three automated license plate readers from the company Flock Safety at major exits from the neighborhood, which appears to be an unusually high density for a residential area compared to the rest of the city, according to the crowd-sourced website, deflock.me. Data from license plate readers in other Southern California cities has been shared with federal immigration authorities in the past.

The city’s most recent contract with Flock Safety, in effect as of July 2024, includes a clause stating the company “may access, use, preserve and/ or disclose the Footage to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/ or third parties, if legally required to do so” or if the company “has a good faith belief” that providing access to the footage “is reasonably necessary to comply with a legal process, enforce this Agreement, or detect, prevent or otherwise address security, privacy, fraud or technical issues, or emergency situations.”

Just this week, Huntington Beach police launched a new “drones as first responders program” to deploy drones to crimes or public safety incidents. Police Lt. Chris Nesmith said Tuesday that the drones will only record footage when responding to an emergency call.

“ The citizens don't need to worry about officers spying in their backyards or surveilling them,” he said. “This isn't a Big Brother program.”

City leaders say the drones can respond to a call for service in under 2 minutes.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Jeramie Scott, who heads the surveillance oversight program at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he’s skeptical of using surveillance cameras to prevent crime, especially in neighborhoods.

“Surveillance equipment and surveillance, in general, are a lot of times a crutch for bad social policies,” he said. “They don't solve the underlying issues of crime.”

He noted that the new system installed in Oak View has the ability to analyze information and alert officers. Scott said he would be concerned the cameras could be used by police to hone in on residents or locations based on “shaky parameters,” like loitering, “as a flag for potential criminal activity.”

“People loiter all the time. It's not indicative of a crime, per se,” he said. “So if [the camera system] is being used in that way, then all of a sudden you're having increased police presence.”

Scott also questioned how the data from cameras would be stored and under what conditions it could be released to other law enforcement agencies, including federal immigration authorities.

Carson, the city spokesperson, said the city follows California law limiting data-sharing with federal immigration authorities. “Unless legally compelled through a valid court order or warrant, we do not provide non-public video footage or other records to immigration enforcement,” he wrote.

The city recently used a $5 million grant from Caltrans to make improvements in the neighborhood, including street signage, landscape, and ongoing graffiti and trash abatement.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Oak View’s history of neglect 

Oak View has long been among the city’s poorest neighborhoods. The median household income is around $74,000 compared to around $120,000 for the city as a whole, according to Census data.

Once a Japanese American settlement, the neighborhood is now majority Latino, compared to the city as a whole, which is only about 20% Latino, according to Census data.

Nearly 60% of residents living in the Census tract that encompasses Oak View speak a language other than English at home, and 28% are foreign-born.

Despite a 2016 legal settlement with trash hauler Republic Services to enclose its adjacent transfer station, the smell of ripe garbage still occasionally wafts through the rows of bungalows, two-story apartment complexes, and modest single-family homes.

Residents have historically complained about crime and gang activity in Oak View, although rates had reportedly dropped in the years leading up the pandemic. Current crime data for the neighborhood is not publicly available, and LAist was unable to obtain data from the city in time for this story.

Last year, the city invested $6.5 million ($5 million from Caltrans) to repave Oak View’s streets, improve street lighting and landscaping, and add colorful signs and crosswalks. That grant, said Carson, also paid for some of the new security cameras.

“Once that project was completed, the [police] department received numerous complaints about vandalism to the revitalized area," he wrote. "To identify those responsible and deter additional costly damage, public safety cameras were installed.”

Rodriguez, the former City Council candidate, said the relationship between the community and the city government and police department had improved over the last decade. The city also holds periodic town hall-style meetings in the community.

 ”I think it's important for the community to have that trust with the city,” Rodriguez said. “That's the goal, right?”

But that trust has been put to the test under the current local and national administrations.

All-MAGA council declares HB a 'non-sanctuary city'

Huntington Beach’s defiantly conservative city government has made national headlines in recent years — over its efforts to restrict controversial books at the city’s public library, install a “MAGA” plaque for the library’s anniversary, and implement a voter ID rule that runs contrary to state election rules.

The plaque that has generated all the controversy in this beach city.

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Courtesy Huntington Beach

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At the council’s first meeting of 2025, the day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, Huntington Beach City Council members voted unanimously to declare the city a “non-sanctuary city.” It was a direct challenge to the state’s sanctuary law, the California Values Act, which restricts local law enforcement agencies from assisting with federal immigration enforcement except in the case of individuals convicted of violent crimes.

The city and the police department also sued the state of California over the state’s sanctuary law, arguing that it forces the city to violate federal law. They also argued in a March 2025 court filing that the city is “harmed by the presence of increased numbers of illegal aliens,” including lowered tax revenue and property values and “increased expenditure of public funds to provide public services to illegal aliens.”

America First Legal, a law firm co-founded by Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration strategy, is representing the city.

The state has argued that the city can’t challenge a state law in federal court. The case is ongoing.

Shortly after Huntington Beach passed its “non-sanctuary city” resolution, city leaders held a town hall meeting for Oak View residents at a nearby Catholic church. At the meeting, then-City Attorney Michael Gates sought to assure the crowd that officers wouldn’t out undocumented immigrants to the federal government unless they landed in police custody. (Gates is now a deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice.)

“We can all go to the grocery store without concern,” he told the standing-room-only crowd. “We can go to church without concern, we can go to the doctor without concern. Living day-to-day, there's no concern that there's immigration enforcement in our police department.

“But if you've committed a crime in Huntington Beach and you're in police custody, they will communicate with the federal government."

Oak View residents told LAist they were unaware of any major ICE presence in the neighborhood in recent months. But there have been round-ups at some nearby car washes and Home Depot parking lots.

Gina Clayton-Tarvin, a trustee at the Ocean View School District, which includes Oak View Elementary, said she worries the neighborhood cameras — including one near the school’s entrance and a second camera on school district property near the preschool — will be used to “spy on” families.  

”People are already nervous in the community,” she said, adding that participation in the school’s summer meals program, and at the local Boys and Girls Club, had dropped precipitously compared to recent years.

“And then these cameras are magically just in the Oak View community, they're not in my neighborhood and I live a half a mile from Oak View,” she said. “So really what's going on? Really what I feel is it's like a form of racial profiling. It's a way to scare people."

Yusra Farzan contributed reporting.

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such battery energy storage systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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Courtesy Steve Campos

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

In an attempt to resolve evictions before they go to trial, the Los Angeles County Superior Court has launched new programs that seek to facilitate settlements by providing free attorneys to tenants and financial relief to landlords who are owed back rent.

Presiding Judge Sergio Tapia said these pilot programs are designed to stem the tide of evictions, which have risen sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We're trying to show litigants across the board, whether it’s tenants or landlords, that the court is the opportunity to try to find resolution faster,” Tapia told LAist.

Both tenant and landlord attorneys agree that settlements can often be the best path for both parties.

One program launched last month in downtown L.A.’s Stanley Mosk Courthouse gives tenants the right to request a mandatory settlement conference overseen by a court-appointed settlement officer.

These tenants, who rarely come to court with legal representation, will be given a free attorney to guide them though the settlement conferences, as long as they earn less than 125% of the federal poverty level.

But lawyers who represent landlords say their clients often feel local government is increasingly putting money toward helping renters, while leaving property owners struggling.

Where does funding come from?

Facing eviction without a lawyer “puts people at such an enormous disadvantage, when landlords normally have lawyers,” said Conway Collis, president of the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, a nonprofit that is helping to fund the Mosk program’s free attorneys.

Other funding comes from Stay Housed L.A., a legal aid partnership funded by the county of L.A. and the city of L.A. through its “mansion tax.”

Landlords will be required to notify tenants about the program in the eviction paperwork they serve to tenants.

Settlement officers come from the court’s pool of temporary judges, who handle lower-level cases, such as traffic infractions. Other officers are retired judges or trained lawyers.

The settlement conferences are being held on the same day as regularly scheduled court hearings, one floor down from the Mosk courthouse’s eviction department.

How are the conferences working so far?

Elena Popp, the executive director of the Eviction Defense Network, which is providing lawyers for the program, said that on one recent day, landlords and tenants were able to reach mutually agreeable settlements in about half the conferences.

“We settled one,” Popp said. “We are very close to settling a second one. The other two are way further apart because the tenant really wants to stay on, but the landlord really wants them to go.”

Settlement deals look different in each case, Popp said. Sometimes they involve landlords letting tenants stay if they pay overdue rent. In other cases, tenants are given additional time to find new housing before they must leave. When settlements are reached, cases are sealed so that evictions won’t be visible on a tenant’s record, a black mark that makes it very difficult to find new housing.

When settlements can’t be reached, landlords and tenants go back upstairs to resume their normal proceedings, Popp said.

No matter how cases are resolved, she said, tenants can’t be expected to navigate legally complex processes on their own.

“One of the things that we stressed when we were setting this up is that you absolutely have to have a lawyer,” Popp said.

Compton program pairs settlements with money to landlords

Another pilot program launched last month at the Compton courthouse offers up to $10,000 to cover rent owed to landlords in cases that settle. Landlords will be required to inform tenants about the settlement conferences. To qualify, either the tenant or the landlord must earn no more than 120% of the area’s median income.

The settlement conferences at the Compton courthouse are overseen by Community Legal Aid of Southern California, and rent relief funding is administered by L.A. County’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs.

Attorney Aaron Kohanim, who represents landlords, said he advises his clients to settle whenever possible, because going to trial is “a casino — you don't know if you're going to win.”

But he also said landlords generally view taxpayer-funded attorneys for tenants as unfair.

“Only one side gets a piece of that pot,” Kohanim said. “Landlords have to pay out of pocket for their attorneys. And on top of that, they are not allowed to collect rent in the middle of the case, so they're getting beaten by two different angles, versus a tenant who is just living there rent-free and they get a free lawyer.”

Tapia said the programs are currently limited to the Mosk and Compton courthouses because of funding constraints and limited resources. But the judge said if they prove successful, they could be expanded county-wide.

“If we're able to show success, that will allow us to recruit a more robust set of settlement officers to perhaps expand,” Tapia said. “We need to see how this pilot plays out first.”