Newly released records are offering a stark look at conditions inside Los Angeles’ long-struggling MacArthur Park, where city crews removed nearly 13 million pounds of trash and hazardous waste over the past year.
Documents obtained by The California Post through a public records request show sanitation workers collected more than 6,359 tons of debris in 2025, including 142,329 pounds of human waste.
The figures underscore the deep challenges facing one of Los Angeles’ most visible public spaces, a park that has for years been affected by homelessness, open-air drug use and deteriorating conditions. The area falls within the district represented by Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez.
Hernandez has backed city-funded harm reduction initiatives in and around the park, including programs that distributed tens of thousands of syringes and crack pipes, while more than $27 million has been directed toward MacArthur Park and the surrounding neighborhood.
“It’s now proven that these harm reduction programs, where tax dollars are spent on facilitating drug use by handing out syringes and keeping people addicted, do not work,” Bill Essayli, Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor, told The California Post. His office has worked with the LAPD and DEA on efforts targeting drug use and dealing in the park.
“It also generates tons of harmful garbage in our communities. Tax dollars would be better spent on combating drug use, building shelters, and offering drug treatment,” Essayli said.
In early March, Hernandez shared a video with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass highlighting a major cleanup push at the troubled park. But when The Post visited MacArthur Park a week later, trash, remnants of homeless encampments and drug-related waste were still visible across the grounds.
In May, authorities arrested a man connected to a nonprofit that has received millions of dollars in city contracts for homelessness services and harm reduction work, including the distribution of free needles and crack pipes. Officials alleged he had a cache of fentanyl and methamphetamine in his vehicle.
“We don’t need more social experiments at MacArthur Park,” said Raul Claros of California Rising and the CD1 Coalition Mutual Aid Network, who unsuccessfully challenged Hernandez for her council seat.
“We need the city to stop giving away needles to drug addicts and start restoring the park.”
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John Alle, a longtime property owner in the area, told The Post that last year’s cleanup records reflect what businesses and residents have been living with for years.
“Our team discovered half-carved rats, dead cats with blood from body punctures, wheelchair parts, discarded food, plastics, needles, bongs and liquor bottles. Sadly, dead seagulls were the first level of crud floating on top.”
Last year, the city’s intensive cleanup program CARE+ — which closes portions of the park while sanitation workers, police, hazardous-waste crews and other agencies remove dangerous materials — carried out 7,111 operations in MacArthur Park.
Among the material removed were 142,329 pounds of human waste, nearly 24,000 pounds of discarded syringes and sharps, more than 107,000 pounds of flammable materials, nearly 42,000 pounds of corrosive chemicals, more than 19,000 pounds of toxins and poisons, more than 32,000 pounds of petroleum products, and thousands of pounds of compressed gases and reactive chemicals requiring specialized disposal.
In all, crews hauled away 12.7 million pounds of solid waste, record show.
Cleanup crews also documented 2,713 mold contaminations, 1,483 bodily fluid contaminations, 855 human waste contaminations, 627 blood contaminations, 1,035 incidents involving rodent droppings, 504 rodent infestations, 523 cockroach infestations, 35 bed bug infestations and 25 dead animal contaminations that rendered personal property too hazardous to keep.
The cleanup logs show workers routinely encountered multiple hazards during the same operation, including biohazards mixed with discarded needles, toxic chemicals, petroleum products, flammable materials and pest-infested belongings.
City officials did not disclose to The Post how much taxpayer money was on the 7,100-plus CARE+ deployments.
The city budgeted more than $41 million for its citywide CARE and CARE+ cleanup programs during the fiscal year, with total program funding exceeding $53 million when administrative and support costs are included.
The appalling findings mirror what The Post has documented at the park over the past year: sprawling homeless encampments, open-air fentanyl and methamphetamine use, drug dealing, illegal dumping, violent crime and mountains of trash.
Councilwoman Hernandez has repeatedly defended her approach to homelessness, emphasizing housing and social services — which includes distributing needles and providing food and laundry services to the area as long-term solution to the crisis.
Her office did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Claros called for the city to temporarily close the park for a full-scale biohazard cleanup and refurbishment before reopening it with permanent park rangers, a stronger LAPD presence, expanded recreation programming, and increased Metro Police and sheriff patrols around the transit station.
“It should be a place where families feel safe, not where criminal activity has replaced recreation,” he said.
For sanitation crews, the dangers extend far beyond the trash itself.
Many deployments begin with formal safety briefings before crews entered the park.
Workers establish designated safety zones, review hazardous materials on site, assign emergency responsibilities and wear protective equipment consistent with OSHA hazardous-waste standards.
Police often needed secured work zones while traffic was diverted and hazardous materials removed before sanitation crews could begin cleaning.
Taken together, the records show MacArthur Park requires one of the most intensive sanitation operations anywhere in Los Angeles.
The records come as federal and local authorities have dramatically escalated enforcement inside the park.
Last month, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Los Angeles Police Department launched Operation Free MacArthur Park, an ongoing crackdown targeting the park’s notorious open-air drug market.
“We want the criminals to know that it doesn’t matter when you go, we can show up and we can control the park whenever need be,” DEA Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge Anthony Chrysanthis told The Post.
Nearly 100 federal agents and LAPD officers flooded the park during one nighttime operation, making arrests and warning dealers they would continue returning.
Authorities say repeated operations have disrupted drug trafficking inside the park, which was originally conceived as LA’s answer to the Champs-Élysées before falling on hard times in the 1980s.
“My hope is that as we continue to remove the criminal elements from the park, the city can increase its investments in cleaning and beautifying the area for the benefit of law abiding citizens,” Essayli said.
Bass said concerns in MacArthur Park “have been decades in the making” and that the her office has worked with the City Council to promote “a safer environment in and around the park.”
“That includes increased sanitation services to restore shared spaces and create safer, cleaner conditions for families and small businesses as well as increasing law enforcement and crime-prevention strategies to disrupt cycles of crime,” she said.
