MacArthur Park: 12.7 Million Pounds of Waste, 18 Federal Drug Arrests, and a Missing Bus Bench

A park drowning in waste and needles

Los Angeles city crews ran more than 7,100 CARE+ cleanup operations at MacArthur Park in 2025 and removed 12.7 million pounds of solid waste, according to the New York Post. That total included 142,329 pounds of human waste, along with syringes, corrosive chemicals, petroleum products, mold, blood, rodent infestations and dead animals, the Post reported. Crews needed OSHA-level protective gear just to do the haul-away.

It is a recurring, taxpayer-funded cycle. The park gets cleared, the waste piles back up, and crews go back in. Whether that cycle reflects a failed policy approach or an underfunded one is a legitimate question, but the scale of the mess itself is not in dispute.

Federal agents move on the drug trade

On May 6, 2026, the Justice Department announced that 18 defendants had been arrested on federal charges tied to an open-air drug market in and around MacArthur Park, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration press release. A federal complaint charged 25 defendants total with possession with intent to distribute and distribution of controlled substances. Agents seized roughly 18 kilograms, about 40 pounds, of fentanyl at one defendant's residence in Calabasas. Seven defendants remained fugitives at the time of the announcement.

"Today, we begin reclaiming MacArthur Park from criminals and drug addicts to return this public space to the citizens of Los Angeles," said Bill Essayli, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, according to the DEA release.

Anthony Chrysanthis, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA's Los Angeles Field Division, said the operation was "only one step" in addressing what he called years of "drug addiction, crime, and despair" in the neighborhood. Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said fentanyl remains "one of the most dangerous threats to our community" and pledged continued joint operations with federal partners.

Enforcement hasn't changed what residents see at night

FOX 11 walked the corridor near Alvarado Street and Sixth Street after the federal takedown and found open drug use, scattered needles and at least one violent confrontation in broad daylight during its visit. A resident identified as Carly told FOX 11, "They ain't ever going to fix the problem, baby." Another resident, William Howard Chromity, said navigating the area requires being ready to "talk back and rough too," and predicted the drug crisis would be "a stain on the Olympics and World Cup coming here."

Los Angeles is set to host matches for the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Asked by FOX 11 whether the federal and LAPD operations had changed anything, Chromity said no: "the same rats come out at night." That is a single resident's account, not a citywide metric, but it lines up with the broader pattern the DEA itself described, calling the operation just one step rather than a solution.

The bench fight

The most recent flashpoint is smaller but telling. A bus stop bench near MacArthur Park was removed after residents complained that homeless people were sleeping and using drugs on it, according to FOX 11. Mayor Karen Bass's office told FOX 11 one bench was removed for maintenance while another was pulled at the Los Angeles Police Department's request "in order to improve public safety."

Not everyone welcomed the move. Angela Robinson, who said she is six months pregnant, now waits standing at the stop where the bench used to be. "It sucks, especially for me," Robinson told FOX 11. "That doesn't make any sense to me."

Removing a bench addresses a visible symptom without addressing why people were sleeping there in the first place, and it shifts a burden onto bus riders who did nothing wrong. Critics of harm-reduction approaches argue the same logic applies at a larger scale: cleanups and social services without sustained enforcement just move the problem around rather than solving it.

The political fault line

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, whose District 1 includes MacArthur Park, has backed a harm-reduction approach emphasizing housing, social services and skepticism toward aggressive policing or encampment clearing, according to the New York Post. Supporters of that model argue that arrests alone don't address addiction or homelessness, and that the park's problems are downstream of a regional housing shortage and treatment gaps that predate any single council term.

Mayor Bass's record on the park has drawn criticism from the Post for what it characterized as inconsistency. In July 2025, Bass confronted federal immigration agents operating near the park, telling them to "leave right now" and calling the operation "outrageous and un-American," the Post reported. When DEA and LAPD conducted their own drug enforcement sweeps in the same park in May 2026, Bass offered more measured, reserved support while continuing to emphasize treatment and services, according to the Post's account. The Post argues this reflects a political inconsistency. Bass's office has not disputed the bench removal facts reported by FOX 11.

None of the sources here indicate a citywide plan to permanently increase policing presence in the park beyond the two recent operations, nor a timeline for the next CARE+ cleanup. Whether the eighteen federal arrests and the missing bench add up to lasting change or another entry in the cycle Chromity described to FOX 11—cleared out, then back to normal by nightfall—remains to be seen.