Los Angeles public libraries are being overwhelmed by violence, drug use and homelessness with frightened households and librarians saying once-safe neighborhood areas are sometimes no-go zones.
Even enforcement measures designed to manage disruptive habits at the moment are buckling beneath the pressure.
Momentary Suspension Letters — which ban unruly patrons from all library branches — have surged almost 90% from 369 in 2023 to 700 suspensions in 2025.
A California Publish assessment of 911 logs obtained via a public information request discovered the emergency name outs had been for assaults, legal threats, drug use, theft, psychological well being crises and trespassing.
And reported incidents at libraries have skyrocketed by almost 135% — from 979 circumstances in 2020 to a staggering 2,300 in 2025.
From the flagship Los Angeles Central Library in Downtown LA, to prosperous Brentwood Department Library and South Los Angeles, cops are being dispatched to arrest the criminals concerned.
The Publish witnessed the disaster firsthand at Central Library in Downtown LA on Friday.
Greater than 100 homeless folks had been gathered inside and out of doors the constructing.
Many occupied public computer systems, whereas others clustered close to entrances, some brazenly utilizing medicine.
One man, nonetheless sporting clothes issued by Males’s Central Jail together with a jail wristband, instructed The Publish he had solely simply been launched and ended up on the library.
Mea Munoz, who brings her 17-month-old son to the library virtually every single day, stated essentially the most aggravating half was getting via the entrance doorways.
“It may be harmful,” she stated in regards to the rabble gathered exterior. “Once we are available in, we put our heads down and simply stroll to the kids’s space.”
Whereas she values the applications the library affords her son, the ambiance was ”scary,” she stated.
Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt slammed Mayor Karen Bass over the revelations, saying she’d ”ceded all of our public areas to vagrants and violent, drug-addled criminals.”
“If Angelenos can’t even safely go to a publicly-funded library, how can anybody anticipate to run a profitable enterprise wherever on this metropolis?” Pratt stated.
“No one feels protected right here. The diploma to which Karen Bass and Nithya Raman have compelled us to just accept this stage of degeneracy in our metropolis has created a malaise that hangs over our neighborhood like a darkish cloud.
“Angelenos are demoralized, hopeless, and have all however given up on this metropolis with these lunatics in cost. We cannot settle for the inmates operating the asylum anymore.”
LAPD management warned in a latest Police Fee assessment that safety at LA public libraries was stretched dangerously skinny.
The division’s Safety Companies Division, which oversees library security, is working with 24 sworn vacancies and a workforce that’s 43% understaffed, in line with division paperwork.
In 2020, Los Angeles libraries had roughly 28 devoted cops assigned throughout town’s library system. As we speak, that quantity has fallen to simply 12, at the same time as crime and emergency calls at libraries proceed to rise.
To fill the hole, the Metropolis has more and more relied on time beyond regulation and personal safety contractors, at the same time as officers warn dependence on a single vendor creates further dangers.
Police instructed the fee that sustaining fundamental order inside libraries has change into more and more troublesome.
At a latest metropolis finances listening to, the place the library system’s $14 million safety finances got here beneath scrutiny, Metropolis Librarian John Szabo acknowledged the dimensions of the disaster.
“Now we have very severe challenges throughout the system,” he stated.
Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky pressed Szabo on why LAPD-funded safety positions stay vacant whereas incidents proceed to rise.
“You’ve the sources,” she stated. “However these positions aren’t stuffed.”
“That’s right,” Szabo responded.
As an alternative, town has expanded social companies inside libraries, together with psychological well being employees and outreach groups, whereas sustaining an open-access philosophy.
Szabo defended that technique.
“We can not rely solely on LAPD and safety companies to take care of all the points that current themselves,” he stated.
Police officers supplied a sharply totally different evaluation.
Of their report back to the fee, they referred to as for elevated hiring, extra seen enforcement and added safety measures comparable to metallic detectors, warning {that a} stronger safety presence stays one of many few instruments that persistently deters crime.
On the bottom, employees say circumstances have already crossed a harmful line.
One librarian, talking anonymously out of concern of retaliation, described fires in loos, drug use, folks bathing in sinks and needles left behind inside library branches.
“It’s a every day survival atmosphere,” the employee stated. “You attempt to keep calm, nevertheless it wears on you.”
Rachel Werner, a library patron, stated she went to a Westside department to take a look at a guide however as an alternative watched an agitated man kick the facet of her automobile earlier than chasing her into the library.
“I used to be scared. The librarians had been terrified,” she stated. “They instructed me it’s so harmful right here.”
Councilmember Traci Park has launched a movement calling for a full assessment of library security, emergency response coordination and staffing.
“Too typically, our librarians are on the frontlines — coping with crisis-level conditions that result in assaults, violence and dysfunction,” Park instructed The Publish. “We can not preserve treating the signs of homelessness with out addressing the underlying issues of dependancy and psychological well being.”
“Finally, we have to be certain that the individuals who work at and go to our libraries are protected.”
Park’s movement was submitted to the council in 2024 and remains to be awaiting approval.
The Publish reached out to Szabo for remark and didn’t obtain a response.
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